When the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) decided last March not to lobby against a proposed missile sale to Saudi Arabia, the undoubted relief it brought the Administration was matched by vexation from some in the Jewish community.
Failure to oppose an arms sale to a country that bankrolls the PLO and Syria and refuses to endorse Israel-Arab peace negotiations sends a wrong signal both to the Administration and to the Arab world, the critics say.
Others have agreed with the AIPAC reasoning that expending energy on a battle against arms already in the Saudi arsenal and which Israel itself has not considered sufficiently threatening to warrant a bitter campaign against their sale, would unnecessarily cause tension with the Administration just when U.S.-Israeli relations are at an unprecedented high.
Instead, they say, attention must be focussed on the important battle ahead protecting aid to Israel for fiscal year 1987 from the unpredictable swings of the Congressional deficit-cutting hatchet.
SOME BATTLES ARE BETTER LEFT UNFOUGHT
For one Jewish organization preoccupied with U.S. and Israeli defense, the AIPAC move was a step in its direction. The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a conservative group that advocates a strong American defense, has long maintained that some battles against arms to Arab countries are better left unfought.
A main argument for selling weapons to the Saudis has often been the need to show U.S. “even handedness” in the Middle East in order to lure Arab countries into the peace process, JINSA’s newsletter, Security Affairs, observed in a recent issue. But it added that to really purchase Saudi loyalty would take “a lot more (weapons) than we have to sell.”
Nevertheless, the editorial maintained, “There are other, more realistic reasons to sell some weapons at some times: we do not want to see the fall of the Saudi royal family; we do not want the oil fields in radical hands; we do want the Saudis (and others) to defend themselves in the event of an Iranian attack; we don’t want to use U.S. troops except as a last resort.”
“Our overall position on arms sales is that you can’t say they’re all bad,” Shoshana Bryen, JINSA’s executive director, said in an interview.
On the other hand, she stressed, there should be pressure for the adoption of measures ensuring that those weapons remain in the right hands.
Take the shoulder-fired Stinger missiles included in the current Saudi package. “I would go one step beyond AIPAC and I would be looking for that guy who would put a rider on the sale,” said Bryen.
The possession of Stinger missiles in Saudi Arabia, she stressed, does not hold out the danger to Israel that the same weapons pose in Jordanian hands. The problem with Stingers, she said, is that “the Saudis have a tendency of losing things.”
To ensure that arms destined for the Saudis do not end up elsewhere, as they have in the past, a rider on the Saudi package, said Bryen, might include the conditions under which the arms would be stored in Saudi Arabia and who can have access to them. Perhaps it would involve keeping the Stingers under the guard of U.S. military personnel.
STRATEGY THAT BACKFIRED
The strategy of challenging every Arab arms sale in its entirety, maintained Bryen, resulted in the 1981 sale to the Saudis of racks and refueling tankers for Saudi F-15 fighter jets — part of the controversial AWACS package — that represent a far greater threat to Israel’s security than the AWACS planes.
“We said the mistake in the AWACS was in the Jewish community,” Bryen said. “It was our opinion then and still is that there was no way ever to have defeated that sale.”
Rather than fight the unwinnable battle–which lost to the Administration by just a few votes after months of bitter campaigning–AIPAC and Jewish organizations here would have done better to support a move by the late Sen. Henry Jackson (D. Wash.) to limit the sale to AWACS alone, Bryen maintained. The Carter Administration prevented the defeat of its proposed sale of F-15s to Saudi Arabia in 1978 only by promising that they would carry solely defensive equipment.
The bomb racks and fuel tankers have already been delivered to the Saudis, while the AWACS are scheduled to be sent following submission to Congress of the President’s certification that the Saudis have provided “substantial assistance” to the United States in promoting peace in the region.
The condition was adopted by Congress in 1985 on the basis of Presidential commitments. Sen. Alan Cranston (D. Calif.), who is leading the Senate fight against the Saudi arms sale, had said he will oppose delivery of the AWACS as well.
A SHIFT IN EMPHASIS
JINSA’s differences with AIPAC on strategy notwithstanding, the organization, which just celebrated its tenth anniversary, in many ways reflects the growing emphasis in both the Jewish community here and among U.S. policy-makers on mutual defense interests in the Middle East as the basis for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship — a shift helped along by a Republican Administration that views its interests in predominantly East-West terms.
JINSA’s officers include its vice president Morris Amitay, a former director of AIPAC, and its secretary, Stephen Rosen, AIPAC’s director of research and information.
The seeds of JINSA were sown with the Yom Kippur War of 1973, which led a group of conservative American Jews to conclude there was a dual need for a defense-minded Jewish organization: to persuade the Jewish community of the necessity of a strong U.S. defense, and to press the case for Israel as a U.S. strategic asset inside the American defense establishment.
This was a time when resentment is said to have been festering in the military over a perceived hostility by many Jewish legislators toward the budgetary needs of the Pentagon at a time when massive quantities of American weapons were being shipped off to the Jewish State.
“It developed that so many of our Jewish compatriots, whose hearts had bled, as ours had, at the slender thread by which the fate of Israel was decided in those crucial days and weeks (of October 1973) — those very same people, all too many of them — had not been as supportive as they should have been of the strengthening process of the United States military forces in the many years preceding 1973, and many of them had a kind of mindset which was very difficult to change,” said Herbert Fierst, JINSA’s chairman of the Board, at a recent 10th anniversary dinner.
The dinner featured the presentation of JINSA’s fourth Henry Jackson Distinguished Service Award, named after the late Democratic Senator from Washington who is remembered as a major spokesman for national defense issues and a strong supporter of Israel.
The award, whose three previous recipients were Jackson, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Rep. Jack Kemp (R. NY), was presented this year to Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (R. Minn.), a member of JINSA’s Board of Advisors.
Also honored at the dinner was JINSA’s first president and current U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, Richard Schifter.
“The fact is that whereas around ten years ago the word defense caused people to look at you askance, that isn’t the case any more, and there’s increased recognition in the Jewish community of the United States of the need for a strong American defense,” Schifter observed.
JINSA HAS ESTABLISHED ITSELF
Without a doubt, JINSA has established itself in Washington. With a membership of some 15,000 and a network of valuable contacts in the Pentagon, it will soon be represented in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
Its big events are the annual “fly-ins” of members for assorted defense-related tours and briefings with military officials, and an annual trip to Israel for American admirals and generals.
In a general sense, the group is a like-minded complement to the less-focussed National Jewish Coalition, a recently-formed Jewish organization that grew out of a group of Republican Jews who were active in the Reagan campaigns. On most foreign affairs issues, JINSA and the current Administration are more or less of one mind.
But Bryen, whose husband, Steven Bryen, is currently Undersecretary of Defense for Trade and Security Policy, stressed that the organization has maintained its independence and that the Administration has never sought to use the group as its own “lobby” in the Jewish community on issues such as aid to the Contras in Central America, the movement for a nuclear arms freeze or the Strategic Defense Initiative — Star Wars.
On military sales to the Middle East, she said, “We’re approached probably as often as they approach AIPAC. But we don’t get phone calls saying what are you going to do for us on this or that issue.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
