After meeting alone with Bruzonsky, Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat Decided to Make His Historic Visit to Israel
Mark Bruzonsky made world headlines very early in his career when he met privately and alone with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo. This meeting led to Sadat’s history-changing visit to Israel less than a week later. The following 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, due to his meeting with Bruzonsky, Sadat sent an unprecedented page-long telegram to the significant international peace conference Bruzonsky had invited him to attend. The telegram makes front-page headlines. The next day, Thursday, pleased with the results of the telegram, Sadat stunned the world by announcing that he would personally go to Israel after Shabbat on Saturday, the first Arab leader ever to 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 his role, unwittingly misleading Sadat about 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 writes a major Statement issued by Senior International Jewish Leaders For The First Time Calling For A Palestinian State
Bruzonsky was again 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 siege 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’s original English text.
Creates the Jewish Committee on the Middle East
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 complete 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 – PALESTINAN 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.
Never before had such a history-making agreement been 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
Predicts Historic Agreement Between Israel and PLO Will Fail on the Very Day it was Signed at the White House
Explains on consecutive FOX News broadcasts that Iraq Did Not Have Nuclear Weapons, but Israel Did
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 firmly believed Iraq did not have nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction and that 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 that 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 handling the questions and his honesty. Ey asked him to come back the next day to continue. He did, but the same thing happened, and was cut off again. Producers, themselves troubled by how Bruzonsky had again been censored, invited him to return the next day and sent the limo 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 invited Bruzonsky to come back for a fourth day in a row, but at that point, he declined. S e Network TV.
Meets with Yasser Arafat and the leadership of the PLO about Congressional Plan to endorse creating a Palestinian State
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.
Explains Stealth Assassination of Yasser Arafat
Even before his poisoning and then when he died in a French military hospital cut off from his 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, Arafat had been the most frequent foreign visitor to the White House during the Clinton Administration in previous years. But with Sharon now in power in Israel, Bush/Cheney in power in Washington, and 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.
Bruzonsky was the live commentator for CTV throughout the Historic White House Ceremony