Very early in his career Mark Bruzonsky made world
headlines when he personally met privately and alone with
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo, a meeting which
lead to Sadat's history-changing visit to Israel less than a
week later. The next morning, Monday, while Bruzonsky
was already rushing back to Israel with the results of his
meeting, a picture of Bruzonsky meeting with Sadat appeared
at the top of the front page of
Egyptian newspapers. Two days later, on
Wednesday, as a result of his meeting with Bruzonsky Sadat
sent an unprecedented page-long
telegram to the major international
peace conference Bruzonsky has invited him to
attend. The telegram make front-page headlines.
The next day, Thursday, pleased with the
results of the telegram, Sadat stunned the world announcing
that he would personally go to Israel after Shabbat on
Saturday, the first Arab leader to ever visit Israel.
Bruzonsky was among the distinguished guests at the Tel Aviv
airport to welcome him, just six days after he had met with
Sadat in Cairo initiating these history-changing
events. In the years that followed
Bruzonsky has spoken of his deep regrets about the role he
played unwittingly misleading Sadat what would come of his
trip. What followed the trip was the
deceptive Camp David Agreement, Sadat's assassination, and
setting in motion the further vanquishment of the
Palestinian people rather than their independence and
Statehood as he and Sadat discussed would result from their
efforts. See newspaper coverage at the time
The Top PLO
Leader in Europe called this Statement "The Balfour
Declaration for the Palestinian People"
Bruzonsky again was responsible for world headlines
when he authored The
Paris Declaration published
on the front page of LeMonde, France's
leading newspaper, on 3 July 1982, as the war in Lebanon was
at a critical turning point. This was a breakthrough
event that greatly contributed to major political
developments soon to take place including growing calls
worldwide for a Palestinian State and formal acceptance by
the PLO of the "Two-State Solution". The Declaration
authored by Bruzonsky, who then helped arrange for its
immediate publication in LeMonde, was signed
by a number of the most important international Jewish
leaders in the world -- Dr. Nahum Goldman, founder of both
The World Jewish Congress and the World Zionist
Organization; Philip Klutznick, President Emeritus of B'nai
B'rith International, successor President of The World
Jewish Congress, and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce; and
Pierre Mendes-France, former President of France -- all in
coordination with Dr. Isam Sartawi, the European
Representative of the PLO and a special close friend of
Bruzonsky. Sartawi told
Arafat, at the time under seige in a bunker in Beirut,
that this unprecedented statement would be seen as "The
Balfour Declaration for the Palestinian People". As a
result of his leadership and working closely with Jewish
leaders Sartawi was assassinated the next year while
representing the PLO at a major international conference.
See: The
Paris Declaration original English text
During the years of the first Intifada in Occupied
Palestine -- 1987 to 1993 -- Bruzonsky organized a group of
Jewish professionals as The
Jewish Committee on the Middle East. JCOME
published a historic Statement of Principles followed
by dozens of full-page magazine ads in many publications
including The New York Review of
Books, The Nation, LAWeekly, The Progressive, Roll Call, The Village Voice, The Washington Report, In These Times, The Washington City Paper,
and other publications. The full Statement was also
reprinted in the Congressional Record and,
when JCOME was invited to testify before a Congressional
Committee, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee)
protested and, when unsuccessful in blocking JCOME, refused
to attend. Three unique video documentaries were also
made and broadcast on cable TV throughout the United States
- PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD, WE DARE TO SPEAK,
and CHOMSKY:
THE NEW WORLD ORDER, LATIN AMERICA, AND THE MIDDLE EAST. And
a unique pamphlet by the distinguished Yale University Law
School Professor Charles Black was published when no
publication in the U.S. would agree to publish it: Let
Us Rethink Our 'Special Relationship' With Israel".
See JCOME.Org
For ten years from
1994 through 2003 Mark Bruzonsky produced and
hosted the unique half-hour Mid-East Realities TV
program. MERTV was broadcast weekly during
evening prime-time hours on all three of the
Public Access Channels in Washington, DC and
nearby Maryland and Virginia. Programs were
also broadcast on national cable channels Free
Speech TV, Deep Dish TV, and The 90s
Channel.
See short 10-minute clips
See
all programs
Bru
Bu
Bruzonsky was
live commentator for CTV throughout the Historic White House
Ceremony
Never before in history had there been such a history-making agreement signed with such a ceremony at the White House. Some three thousand guests were present on the White House lawn on 13 September 1993 as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Chairman Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and President William Clinton, along with other top officials, participated in an elaborate ceremony whose stated goal was to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians based on mutual recognition. Nearly all commentators on that day were declaring that this agreement would at last result in the long-sought peace between Israel and Palestine, Palestinian independence, and furthermore would spread throughout the region. Nearly alone among the major network TV commentators Bruzonsky explained on CTV, as he provided the live commentary during the White House ceremony, and in interviews during the days before and after, that he believed the agreement would fail, that we were all asked to be witnesses at this marriage of the oddest of the odd couples who were getting married not only for different reasons but with far different expectations and desires. See CTV Programs
A very unusual situation occurred in 1998 at a time of great tension with Iraq with pressures growing for further U.S. bombing and possible invasion at that time. At this critical time Bruzonsky was invited to appear on FOX News. He explained that though he had no access to classified information he strongly believed Iraq did not have nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction and the U.S. should not use such falsehoods as an excuse for war. Then when he mentioned that there was a country in the Middle East who did have such weapons, Israel, he was cut off by the program host. In the studio the producers who had invited Bruzonsky complimented him for how he handled the questions and for his honesty. They invited him to come back the next day to continue. He did, but the same thing happened and he was cut off again. The producers, themselves troubled by how Bruzonsky had again been censored, invited him to come back again the next day sending the limo once again to pick him up. He did, but the same thing happened and he was again cut off when he tried to explain that though Iraq did not have such weapons Israel did and there were powerful forces in the U.S. pushing for war. The producers actually invited Bruzonsky to come back for a fourth day in a row, but at that point he declined. See Network TV.
Two members of Congress, Paul Findley (R - Illinois) and Pete McCloskey (D - Calif), enlisted Bruzonsky to privately meet with Arafat to accept the "Two-State Solution" if they would introduce such a resolution in the U.S. Congress. At the time the PLO was considered by the U.S. to be a "terrorist organization". The meeting took place in Kubba Place in Egypt for two hours with Arafat and the entire 8-person leadership of the PLO and led to the PLO endorsing the "Two-State Solution" for the first time at the next Palestine National Congress held in Algiers in 1988. Bruzonsky took to the meeting, Muna Hamzeh, the Palestinian woman in the picture who he was to marry and who knew Arafat when she was a young girl as her father was a secret official in the PLO.
Even before his poisoning and then when he died in
a French military hospital cut off from his personal
physician, Bruzonsky explained and documented on radio and
TV programs his reasons for concluding that the
Israelis had "stealth assassinated" Yasser Arafat, the
most important Palestinian leader of all time, and that this
was done in close coordination with the
Americans. As Bruzonsky explained, in previous
years, during the Clinton Administration, Arafat had been
the most frequent foreign visitor to the White
House. But with Sharon now in power in Israel,
Bush/Cheney in power in Washington, and in the aftermath of
9/11, Sharon maneuvered to isolate and assassinate his
long-time nemesis Arafat, built "The Wall", implement
greater-than-Apartheid restrictions and divisions against
Palestinians, and further escalated Israeli territorial
control to prevent the Palestinian State Arafat had
envisioned.
See Article
Index November
2004. See Articles
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