During the years of the first Intifada in Occupied Palestine - 1987 to 1993 - a group of Jewish professionals created a unique organization known as The Jewish Committee on the Middle East. JCOME published a historic Statement of Principles and followed that with numerous full-page magazine ads calling for a major change in U.S. Middle East policies and serious efforts to create a Palestinian State. These nearly one hundred magazine ads appeared in many publications throughout the U.S. 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 Statement of Principles was also reprinted in The Congressional Record and when JCOME was asked to testify before a Congressional Committee, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) organization, popularly known as the Israel Lobby, protested. When unsuccessful in blocking JCOME, AIPAC refused to attend.
JCOME, led by founder Mark Bruzonsky,
produced and broadcast three
unique video documentaries 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. JCOME also
stepped forward, when all American magazines and journals
refused, to publish a unique pamphlet authored
by distinguished Yale University Law School Professor
Charles Black: "Let
Us Rethink Our 'Special Relationship' With Israel".
In retrospect, JCOME's efforts were the origins of today's BDS - Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions - Movement that has spread throughout the U.S. and worldwide in recent years. The Origins of BDS - The Story of the Jewish Committee on the Middle East, is the title of the forthcoming book that tells the story of how and why JCOME was created and makes available for the first time the entire collection of magazine pages as well as the Congressional testimony and Professor Black pamphlet.
JCOME had to end its activities in 1994, but Mark Bruzonsky and persons associated with JCOME from the past can be reached by emailed at JCOME@jcome.org and by phone at 202-362-5266.