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			Published on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

			Not Revising History on Tom Lantos
			by Sam Sedaei
			As I entered the building of the United States Congress one afternoon in early December of last year, I walked through long hallways in the basement of the Capitol to attend a hearing on the Annapolis meeting between Israelis, Palestinians and a number of other countries from the region. Retired Ambassador Edward Peck - the head of the White House Terrorism Task Force during the Reagan administration - was the keynote guest. Other participants included Journalist Dan Lieberman and retired Professor Grace Austin. A staff member as well as the lawyer for the Council for the National Interest foundation in Capitol Hill were also present, an organization that has long promoted America's interests through supporting a fair and even-handed policies in the Middle East.



			It was a great event, except there was one problem with it. The hearing wasn't organized by Congress. In fact, it was only a counter-hearing to the official House hearing on the matter. The Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee had previously decided that he was not going to ask any current or former State Department officials to speak at the official Congressional hearing on Annapolis. Instead, he had only invited two people to speak at the hearing: Dennis Ross - counselor of the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which is the research arm of American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) - and David Wurmser - a neoconservative who has long been credited as being one of the main authors of the 1996 report Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, which was prepared for then incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.



			The Chairman was made well aware of the fact that both invited witnesses had a consist record of disproportionately and unconditionally supporting Israel, and that there was a need for at least one State Department official who could have an objective voice in the hearing. Despite hundreds of calls that were made to his office in the run-up to the hearing, he made the point of steadfastly refusing to invite a truly independent expert to speak. The name of the Chairman of House Foreign Affairs Committee was Representative Tom Lantos.



			Tom Lantos passed away on Monday. In light of his death, friends and colleagues have been expressing a great deal of sympathy and have had many nice things to say about him. As an immigrant and survivor of an extremist regime, this blogger admits that Lantos did have one of those truly American stories that stretched from his survival as a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor to immigrating to the United States and electing to the House of Representatives. Furthermore, it is understandable to see the way in which Lantos is viewed in light of the role that the United States played in saving Europe from fascism. In other words, Lantos was seen as a symbol of what America fought for in World War II.




			However, as I read obituary after obituary on Tom Lantos's death - including a few on this site - I have noticed that most engage in relentlessly deliberate or unintentional revisionism. We saw this kind of revisionism following the death of Jerry Falwell when most seemed to remember him as a great figure, conveniently forgetting the way in which he had promoted demagoguery and intolerance toward gays and lesbians or those who had a different view of when life begins. Gerald Ford seemed to receive the same kind of treatment when after his death; it was almost as if all the people who had previously been so outraged about his pardoning Richard Nixon had pressed the reset buttons of their memories, remembering nothing but great things about his presidency.




			To the extent that those who were personally related or acquainted with Tom Lantos wish to express their view of the kind of person he was in his private life, they are entitled to do it and this blogger would have nothing but respect for those opinions. But when supporters and media personalities alike try to define Tom Lantos in terms of the value of his service in public life, it would be unjust for those of us who disagree to sit back and accept historical revisions.




			Since 1981, Lantos spent twenty-seven years representing California's 12th district and Israeli interests as an AIPAC ally in Congress and was one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq War, which as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt eloquently lay out in Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, was not our war to fight, but we got pushed into it by Israel. Lantos may have made the same excuses for voting for the war that Hillary Clinton and others who caved make. However, evidence proves the existence of other motivations on his part. On September 30, 2002, Ha'aretz - the world-known Israeli newspaper - quoted Lantos as having told Minister of Knesset (Israeli legislature) Colette Avital, "My dear Colette, you won't have any problem with Saddam. We'll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator who will be good for us and for you." This may be why as one former AIPAC leader put it, Lantos "is true blue and white" and Serge Halimi of Le Monde Diplomatique has written that Lantos has acted "as a mouth piece for Likud policies."




			Lantos used his status as a holocaust survivor in Congress and an unconditional supporter of Israel to obtain the support of Pro-Israel PACs. In 2004, the 12-term incumbent's power was challenged by Maad Abu-Ghazalah, a Palestinian-born lawyer, and Ro Khanna, a 27-year-old anti-war Indian-American lawyer. Hardly a critic of Israel, Khanna simply held the position that "we have to find a way of articulating a very pro-Israel position that recognizes it as a strong ally and recognizes its security threat, but expresses empathy to the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people," Khanna said. "That's in the best interest of the U.S., in the best interest of Israel and in the best interest of the world."




			But as anything short of unconditional support for Israel is unacceptable to the Israel lobby, Pro-Israel PAC funds channeled the total sum of $31,600 in campaign contributions to Lantos (WRMEA). The contribution helped him hold on to his seat despite strong anti-war sentiments in his district. Pro-Israel PACs were quite generous to Lantos over his career, and as of 2006, they contributed $112,750 to his campaigns (WRMEA). While he did not receive as much as the authors of the anti-Iran Kyl-Lieberman Amendment over their lifetimes - Senator Kyl: $163,025, and Senator Lieberman: $286,258 - as of today, Lantos has been the 8th highest receiver of Pro-Israel PACs contributions in the U.S. House of 435 representatives.




			Any impartial historian will attest to the fact that since World War II, the United States has pursued an uneven-handed policy in the Middle East, and John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have identified the significant influence of AIPAC and the Israel Lobby in the United States as the cause of this phenomenon. In return, that uneven-handed policy has continually cost the United States allies around the world and thousands of lives throughout terrorist attacks against us or through a war we have been fighting for the past six years. It is fine for friends of Tom Lantos to remember what, this blogger has no doubt, have been pleasant times. But let's not forget that to the extent that America's policy has for the past four decades been to support a foreign state's illegal occupation, home demolitions and settlement building in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, give them one-fifth of our entire foreign aid and veto just about every UN Security Council resolution that's passed against them, Tom Lantos was the embodiment of everything that has been wrong with American foreign policy in the Middle East.




			While this writer takes no pleasure in any human being's death, one can also see the end of Lantos's presence in politics as a symbol that reminds us about a new generation of politicians who will have the opportunity of allowing a more objective analysis of the impact of our foreign policy on our standing and moral reputation in the world.


			-Sam Sedaei

Revision as of 11:15, 15 February 2008

This article is currently being heavily edited because its subject has recently died. Information about their death and related events may change significantly and initial news reports may be unreliable. The most recent updates to this article may not reflect the most current information. Please feel free to improve this article (but edits without reliable references may be removed) or discuss changes on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The native form of this personal name is Lantos Tamás Péter. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Tom Lantos


Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 12th district
In office January 5 1981 – February 11 2008
Preceded by	William H. Royer
Succeeded by	TBD

Personal details
Born	(1928-02-01)February 1, 1928 Budapest, Hungary
Died	February 11, 2008(2008-02-11) (aged 80) National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Annette Lantos
Residence	San Mateo, California

Thomas Peter Lantos (February 1 1928 – February 11 2008) was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 1981 until his death, representing the northern two-thirds of San Mateo County and a small portion of southwest San Francisco.

Lantos had announced in early January that he would not run for reelection in 2008 because of cancer of the esophagus.

Personal and family life

Born as Lantos Tamás Péter to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, Lantos was part of a resistance movement against the Nazis during the German occupation of Hungary. In his floor speeches, he sometimes referred to himself as one of the few living members of Congress who fought against fascism.

He sought refuge in a safe house established by Raoul Wallenberg; in 1981 Lantos sponsored a bill making Wallenberg an Honorary Citizen of the United States. He moved to the United States in 1947, and spoke with a pronounced Hungarian accent.

Lantos considered himself a secular Jew . Upon immigrating to the United States under the auspices of Hillel he attended the University of Washington and the University of California, Berkeley, receiving his Ph.D in 1953.

For three decades prior to his service in Congress (1950–1980), Lantos was a professor of economics, an international affairs analyst for public television, and a consultant to a number of businesses. He also served as a senior advisor to several U.S. Senators.

Lantos made his first run for office in 1980, when he defeated one-term Republican congressman Bill Royer by 5,700 votes. He never faced another contest nearly that close, and was reelected 13 times. He was the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress.

Lantos and his wife Annette have two daughters, Annette and Katrina, and 17 grandchildren. Lantos' wife is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church). Annette Lantos is a first cousin of the sisters Zsa Zsa, Eva, and Magda Gabor. Katrina, who married ambassador and former U.S. Representative from New Hampshire Richard Swett, was a candidate for Congress in New Hampshire, running for the House of Representative in 2002 against Charlie Bass and in 2008 for the U.S. Senate against John Sununu. His daughter Annette is married to Timber Dick, "an independent businessman in Colorado."

Lantos appeared in the Academy Award-winning film The Last Days, a documentary of the Holocaust's effect on Hungarian Jews, and "To Bear Witness", another documentary.

Lantos often brought a small white terrier named Mackó (little bear in Hungarian, pronounced mɒtskoː) to his Capitol Hill office. Lantos' previous dog, a small poodle named Gigi, was also a fixture in Washington.

Tom Lantos was an honorary member of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.

Political positions

Lantos was a strong supporter of the Iraq War from the start, but from 2006 onward made increasingly critical statements about the conduct of the war, and as the chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs he held 20 oversight hearings on the war in 2007. (See separate section below about the war in Iraq.)

Lantos was a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and repeatedly called for reforms to the nation's health-care system, reduction of the national budget deficit and the national debt, repeal of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, and has opposed Social Security privatization efforts. He supported same-sex marriage rights and marijuana for medical use, was a strong proponent of gun control and was adamantly pro-choice.

Lantos was a well-known advocate on behalf of the environment, receiving consistently high ratings from the League of Conservation Voters and other environmental organizations for his legislative record. His long-standing efforts to protect open space brought thousands of acres under the protection of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, including Mori Point, Sweeney Ridge and — most recently — Rancho Corral de Tierra, which will keep its watersheds and delicate habitats free from development permanently. In 2005 he opposed an effort to expand public use of the Farallon Islands, a protected wildlife haven.

Lantos consistently championed local transportation projects that need federal funds and, given his seniority in Congress, proved successful at delivering this support.

Foreign affairs issues

Lantos served as the chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Through its more than 20 years of work, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus — of which Lantos was co-chair with Representative Frank Wolf — has covered a wide range of human rights issues, speaking out for Christians who want to practice their faith in Saudi Arabia and Sudan, fighting for Tibetans to be able to retain their culture and religion in Tibet and advocating for other oppressed minorities worldwide. Lantos’ efforts to protect religious freedom in 2004 resulted in a bill to halt the global spread of antisemitism.

Lantos was involved with his colleagues on the International Relations Committee on many decisions that affect other aspects of American foreign policy. Lantos spoke out strongly against waste, fraud and abuse in the multi-billion dollar U.S. reconstruction program in Iraq, and has warned that the U.S. may lose Afghanistan to the Taliban if the Bush Administration fails to take decisive action to halt the current decline in political stability there.

Lantos, then the ranking Democrat on the International Relations Committee, tried to disrupt U.S. military aid to Egypt. Lantos argued that the Egyptian military had made insufficient efforts to stop the flow of money and weapons across the Egyptian border to Hamas in Gaza, and had not contributed troops to internationally-supported peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Lantos was a strong advocate of Israel

1991 Persian Gulf War

War in Iraq

On October 4 2002, Lantos led a narrow majority of Democrats on the House International Relations Committee to a successful vote in support of the Resolution for the Use of Force, seeking the approval of the United Nations and under the condition that Bush would allow UN weapons inspectors to finish their work and that Bush would need to return to Congress for an actual declaration of war before invading Iraq. The resolution later passed the House and the Senate with a total of 373 members of Congress supporting it. "The train is now on its way," said Lantos after his — and the President's — victory. In later hearings on the war, Lantos continued his enthusiastic support. At one point he was confronted by witnesses who questioned the likelihood of enthusiastic Baghdadis welcoming the invading Americans; Lantos called this a kind of racism, to suggest the Iraqis might be so ungrateful.

Starting in early 2006, Lantos has distanced himself from the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, making critical statements at hearings, on the House floor and in published media interviews about the conduct of the war. During hearings of the House International Relations Committee, where he was then the ranking member, Lantos repeatedly praised the investigative work of the office of the Special Inspector of Iraq Reconstruction General Stuart Bowen, which uncovered evidence of waste, fraud and abuse in the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars intended to help secure and rebuild Iraq.

Lantos was an immediate and consistent critic of the troop surge advocated by President Bush. On the night in January 2007 that Bush announced his plan, Lantos responded, "I oppose the so-called surge that constitutes the centerpiece of the President's plan. Our efforts in Iraq are a mess, and throwing in more troops will not improve it." And during a joint House hearing on September 10 2007 featuring General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Lantos said, "The Administration’s myopic policies in Iraq have created a fiasco. Is it any wonder that on the subject of Iraq, more and more Americans have little confidence in this Administration? We can not take ANY of this Administration's assertions on Iraq at face value anymore, and no amount of charts or statistics will improve its credibility. This is not a knock on you, General Petraeus, or on you, Ambassador Crocker. But the fact remains, gentlemen, that the Administration has sent you here today to convince the members of these two Committees and the Congress that victory is at hand. With all due respect to you, I must say … I don't buy it." At the same hearing, Lantos drew comparisons between some of the current U.S. activities in Iraq to U.S. support two decades ago of Islamic militants in Afghanistan: "America should not be in the business of arming, training and funding both sides of a religious civil war in Iraq. Did the Administration learn nothing from our country’s actions in Afghanistan two decades ago, when by supporting Islamist militants against the Soviet Union, we helped pave the way for the rise of the Taliban? Why are we now repeating the short-sighted patterns of the past?"

Darfur

On April 28 2006, Lantos and four other Democratic U.S. Representatives (Sheila Jackson Lee, Jim McGovern, Jim Moran, and John Olver), along with six other activists, took part in a civil disobedience action in front of the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. They were protesting the role of the Sudanese government in carrying out genocide in the Darfur conflict and were arrested for disorderly conduct.

Lebanon

On August 27 2006, at the Israeli Foreign Ministry building in Israel, Lantos said he would block a foreign aid package promised by President George W. Bush to Lebanon and free the funds only when Beirut agreed to the deployment of international troops on the border with Syria. Lantos was meeting at the time with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni after talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Retirement

On January 2 2008, Lantos announced he would not run for a 15th term in the House due to his cancer diagnosis. However, he had planned to complete his final term. Lantos was quoted as saying, "It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a Member of Congress," he said. "I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."

Lantos had endorsed former State Senator Jackie Speier in the primary.

Congressional scorecards

Controversies

During a 1996 Congressional inquiry into the "Filegate" scandal, Rep. Lantos told witness Craig Livingstone that "with an infinitely more distinguished public record than yours, Admiral Boorda committed suicide when he may have committed a minor mistake." Boorda, the Chief of Naval Operations, had recently taken his own life after his right to wear Combat V decorations had been questioned. Lantos was criticized by some (including fellow Congressman Joe Scarborough) who interpreted the remark as a suggestion that Livingstone too should kill himself.

On May 3 2000, Lantos was involved in an automobile accident while driving on Capitol Hill. Lantos drove over a young boy's foot and then failed to stop his vehicle. He was later fined over the incident for inattentive driving.

In 2002, Lantos, who was on the House Committee on International Affairs, took Colette Avital, a Labor Party member of the Israeli Knesset, by the hand and, according to Ha'aretz, tried to reassure her with these words: "My dear Colette, don't worry. You won't have any problem with Saddam. We'll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator, who will be good for us and for you." He later denied saying this, but Avital confirmed it.

In June 2007, Lantos called former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder a "political prostitute" at the dedication ceremony of the Victims of Communism Memorial, which caused a political backlash from the German government. Lantos was referring to Schröder's ties to energy business in Russia, and remarked that this appellation would offend prostitutes.

In October 2007, Dutch parliament members said Lantos insulted them while discussing the War on Terrorism by stating that the Netherlands had to help the United States, because they liberated them in the Second World War, while adding that the upheaval over Guantanamo in Europe was bigger than over Auschwitz at the time.

Electoral history

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items.

California's 11th congressional district: Results 1980–1990
Year		Democrat	Votes	Pct		Republican	Votes	Pct		3rd Party	Party	Votes	Pct		3rd Party	Party	Votes	Pct
1988		Tom Lantos	145,484	71%		Bill Quraishi	50,050	24%		Bill Wade	Libertarian	4,683	2%		Victor Martinez	Peace and Freedom	2,906	1%	*
1990		Tom Lantos	105,029	66%		Bill Quraishi	45,818	29%		June R. Genis	Libertarian	8,518	5%

*Write-in and minor candidate notes: In 1988, Nicholas W. Kudrovzoff received 1,893 votes (1%).

California's 12th congressional district: Results 1992–2006
Year	Democrat	Votes	Pct	Republican	Votes	Pct	3rd Party	Party	Votes	Pct	3rd Party	Party	Votes	Pct
1992	Tom Lantos	157,205	69%	Jim Tomlin	53,278	23%	Mary Weldon	Peace and Freedom	10,142	4%	George O'Brien	Libertarian	7,782	3%
1994	Tom Lantos	118,408	67%	Deborah Wilder	57,228	33%
1996	Tom Lantos	149,049	72%	Storm Jenkins	49,276	24%	Christopher V.A. Schmidt	Libertarian	6,111	3%	Richard Borg	Natural Law	3,472	2%
1998	Tom Lantos	128,135	74%	Robert Evans, Jr.	36,562	21%	Michael J. Moloney	Libertarian	8,515	5%
2000	Tom Lantos	158,404	75%	Mike Garza	44,162	21%	Barbara J. Less	Libertarian	6,431	3%	Rifkin Young	Natural Law	3,559	2%
2002	Tom Lantos	105,597	68%	Michael Moloney	38,381	25%	Maad H. Abu-Ghazalah	Libertarian	11,006	7%
2004	Tom Lantos	171,852	68%	Mike Garza	52,593	21%	Pat Gray	Green	23,038	9%	Harland Harrison	Libertarian	5,116	2%
2006	Tom Lantos	138,650	76%	Michael Moloney	43,674	24%

References

^ Project Vote Smart: Tom Lantos
"AP News Alert". Associated Press. 2008-02-11. Rep. Tom Lantos of California, the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress, died early Monday morning, his spokeswoman said.
Lantos, stricken with cancer, to retire at the end of the year San Francisco Chronicle, January 2, 2008. Accessed online 2 January, 2008
"California's Lantos says cancer will prevent another House run". Los Angeles Times. January 3, 2008. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) Retrieved on 29 January 2008
Janine Zacharia, Lantos's List, Jerusalem Post, dated 13 April but year not given, presumably 2001. Janine Zacharia, Lantos' D.C. office is a Living Tribute to Wallenberg, originally from Jewish Bulletin of Northern California (credited as a Jerusalem Post Service story, and appears to be a reworking of the previous story), April 20, 2001; reproduced on Lantos's congressional web site. Aleza Goldsmith, Arab-American challenges Lantos in three-way race, j. (formerly Jewish Bulletin of Northern California), October 4, 2002. All accessed 25 September 2006.
Mark Simon, Lantos Sells House in Hillsborough, San Francisco Chronicle, June 22, 2000. Accessed 25 September 2006.
http://www.lantos.org/biography.php
Tom Lantos at IMDb. Accessed 25 September 2006.
Congressional Progressive Caucus membership list, accessed 25 September 2006.
Vote Smart: Tom Lantos: Gun issues, accessed 25 September 2006.
Vote Smart: Tom Lantos: Abortion issues, accessed 25 September 2006.
Vote Smart: Tom Lantos: Environmental Issues, accessed 25 September 2006.
Edward Epstein, BAY AREA: Recreation area about to get bigger: Historic rancho near Devil's Slide a deal at $15 million, San Francisco Chronicle, December 7, 2005. Accessed online 25 September 2006.
Bush signs Lantos’ open space bill, San Mateo Daily Journal, December 22, 2005. Accessed online 25 September 2006.
Index of Congressional Human Rights Caucus stories on Lantos's congressional site. Accessed 25 September 2006.
Chronicle Washington Bureau, Bush inks Jewish bill by Lantos, San Francisco Chronicle, October 19, 2004. Accessed 25 September 2006.
^ CONGRESSMAN SAYS GIRL WAS CREDIBLE, The New York Times. January 12, 1992
Kuwaiti Gave Consistent Account of Atrocities, The New York Times. January 27, 1992
^ Deception on Capitol Hill, The New York Times. January 15, 1992
"THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE CONGRESSIONAL RESOLUTION; LAWMAKERS BEGIN PUSH TO GIVE BUSH AUTHORITY ON IRAQ," by Alison Mitchell, The New York Times, October 4, 2002
Petraeus Hearing, Opening Statement by Chairman Lantos at hearing With General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. September 10, 2007
Jim Doyle, Five members of Congress arrested over Sudan protest, San Francisco Chronicle, April 28, 2006. Accessed September 25, 2006.
Congressman Tom Lantos to Complete his Congressional Service at the End of Current Term
CQ Politics | California Dems Expected to Vie for Lantos Seat
Inside Bay Area - Lantos endorses Speier as 'our best candidate'
""Representative Tom Lantos (CA)"". vote-smart.org. Project Vote Smart. Archived from the original on 2006-03-01. Retrieved 2007-12-31.
""Scorecard for the 109th Congress U.S. House of Representatives"". Secular.org. Secular Coalition for America. Retrieved 2007-12-31.
George Lardner, Jr, Panel Sputters; Immunity Vote Fails, The Washington Post, May 14, 1998. Accessed September 11 1997.
Jackie Kucinich, In trouble with the law: run-ins with police are fact of Capitol life, The Hill, May 11, 2006. Accessed Feb. 15 2008.
US Lawmaker's "Prostitute" Remarks Provokes Germany | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 13.06.2007
The Associated Press, Senior US Democratic lawmaker offends Dutch counterparts with historical remarks, International Herald Tribune, October 27, 2007. Accessed October 27 2007.
^ "Election Statistics". Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Retrieved 2008-01-10.

External links

Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
Notable Names DataBase — Tom Lantos
SourceWatch Congresspedia — Tom Lantos profile
Tom Lantos for Congress, Campaign site
They're jumping in head first Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, September 30, 2002
Lantos' D.C. office is a living tribute to Wallenberg Janine Zacharia, Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, April 20, 2001
Lantos Lashes Out at Germany and France
Lantos set to retire after 27 years in public office -- Article in the Canadian Hungarian Journal

Political offices
Preceded byWilliam H. Royer	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 11th congressional district 1981–1993	Succeeded byRichard W. Pombo
Preceded byTom Campbell	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 12th congressional district 1993–2008	Succeeded byTBD
Preceded byHenry J. Hyde	Chairman of United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs 2007–2008	Succeeded byTBD

Published on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

Not Revising History on Tom Lantos by Sam Sedaei As I entered the building of the United States Congress one afternoon in early December of last year, I walked through long hallways in the basement of the Capitol to attend a hearing on the Annapolis meeting between Israelis, Palestinians and a number of other countries from the region. Retired Ambassador Edward Peck - the head of the White House Terrorism Task Force during the Reagan administration - was the keynote guest. Other participants included Journalist Dan Lieberman and retired Professor Grace Austin. A staff member as well as the lawyer for the Council for the National Interest foundation in Capitol Hill were also present, an organization that has long promoted America's interests through supporting a fair and even-handed policies in the Middle East.

It was a great event, except there was one problem with it. The hearing wasn't organized by Congress. In fact, it was only a counter-hearing to the official House hearing on the matter. The Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee had previously decided that he was not going to ask any current or former State Department officials to speak at the official Congressional hearing on Annapolis. Instead, he had only invited two people to speak at the hearing: Dennis Ross - counselor of the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which is the research arm of American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) - and David Wurmser - a neoconservative who has long been credited as being one of the main authors of the 1996 report Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, which was prepared for then incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The Chairman was made well aware of the fact that both invited witnesses had a consist record of disproportionately and unconditionally supporting Israel, and that there was a need for at least one State Department official who could have an objective voice in the hearing. Despite hundreds of calls that were made to his office in the run-up to the hearing, he made the point of steadfastly refusing to invite a truly independent expert to speak. The name of the Chairman of House Foreign Affairs Committee was Representative Tom Lantos.

Tom Lantos passed away on Monday. In light of his death, friends and colleagues have been expressing a great deal of sympathy and have had many nice things to say about him. As an immigrant and survivor of an extremist regime, this blogger admits that Lantos did have one of those truly American stories that stretched from his survival as a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor to immigrating to the United States and electing to the House of Representatives. Furthermore, it is understandable to see the way in which Lantos is viewed in light of the role that the United States played in saving Europe from fascism. In other words, Lantos was seen as a symbol of what America fought for in World War II.

However, as I read obituary after obituary on Tom Lantos's death - including a few on this site - I have noticed that most engage in relentlessly deliberate or unintentional revisionism. We saw this kind of revisionism following the death of Jerry Falwell when most seemed to remember him as a great figure, conveniently forgetting the way in which he had promoted demagoguery and intolerance toward gays and lesbians or those who had a different view of when life begins. Gerald Ford seemed to receive the same kind of treatment when after his death; it was almost as if all the people who had previously been so outraged about his pardoning Richard Nixon had pressed the reset buttons of their memories, remembering nothing but great things about his presidency.

To the extent that those who were personally related or acquainted with Tom Lantos wish to express their view of the kind of person he was in his private life, they are entitled to do it and this blogger would have nothing but respect for those opinions. But when supporters and media personalities alike try to define Tom Lantos in terms of the value of his service in public life, it would be unjust for those of us who disagree to sit back and accept historical revisions.

Since 1981, Lantos spent twenty-seven years representing California's 12th district and Israeli interests as an AIPAC ally in Congress and was one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq War, which as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt eloquently lay out in Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, was not our war to fight, but we got pushed into it by Israel. Lantos may have made the same excuses for voting for the war that Hillary Clinton and others who caved make. However, evidence proves the existence of other motivations on his part. On September 30, 2002, Ha'aretz - the world-known Israeli newspaper - quoted Lantos as having told Minister of Knesset (Israeli legislature) Colette Avital, "My dear Colette, you won't have any problem with Saddam. We'll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator who will be good for us and for you." This may be why as one former AIPAC leader put it, Lantos "is true blue and white" and Serge Halimi of Le Monde Diplomatique has written that Lantos has acted "as a mouth piece for Likud policies."

Lantos used his status as a holocaust survivor in Congress and an unconditional supporter of Israel to obtain the support of Pro-Israel PACs. In 2004, the 12-term incumbent's power was challenged by Maad Abu-Ghazalah, a Palestinian-born lawyer, and Ro Khanna, a 27-year-old anti-war Indian-American lawyer. Hardly a critic of Israel, Khanna simply held the position that "we have to find a way of articulating a very pro-Israel position that recognizes it as a strong ally and recognizes its security threat, but expresses empathy to the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people," Khanna said. "That's in the best interest of the U.S., in the best interest of Israel and in the best interest of the world."

But as anything short of unconditional support for Israel is unacceptable to the Israel lobby, Pro-Israel PAC funds channeled the total sum of $31,600 in campaign contributions to Lantos (WRMEA). The contribution helped him hold on to his seat despite strong anti-war sentiments in his district. Pro-Israel PACs were quite generous to Lantos over his career, and as of 2006, they contributed $112,750 to his campaigns (WRMEA). While he did not receive as much as the authors of the anti-Iran Kyl-Lieberman Amendment over their lifetimes - Senator Kyl: $163,025, and Senator Lieberman: $286,258 - as of today, Lantos has been the 8th highest receiver of Pro-Israel PACs contributions in the U.S. House of 435 representatives.

Any impartial historian will attest to the fact that since World War II, the United States has pursued an uneven-handed policy in the Middle East, and John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have identified the significant influence of AIPAC and the Israel Lobby in the United States as the cause of this phenomenon. In return, that uneven-handed policy has continually cost the United States allies around the world and thousands of lives throughout terrorist attacks against us or through a war we have been fighting for the past six years. It is fine for friends of Tom Lantos to remember what, this blogger has no doubt, have been pleasant times. But let's not forget that to the extent that America's policy has for the past four decades been to support a foreign state's illegal occupation, home demolitions and settlement building in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, give them one-fifth of our entire foreign aid and veto just about every UN Security Council resolution that's passed against them, Tom Lantos was the embodiment of everything that has been wrong with American foreign policy in the Middle East.

While this writer takes no pleasure in any human being's death, one can also see the end of Lantos's presence in politics as a symbol that reminds us about a new generation of politicians who will have the opportunity of allowing a more objective analysis of the impact of our foreign policy on our standing and moral reputation in the world.

-Sam Sedaei

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