Behind the Headlines Jewish Leaders Differ on How to Meet Carter’s Mideast Tactics

Some Jewish leaders and intellectuals here are indicating apprehension that critical expressions within the Jewish community towards the Carter Administration’s moves in the Arab-Israeli conflict may create serious problems for Israel itself and the Jewish world. Their apprehension, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency is informed, is not primarily based on the continued vigorous support for Israel’s security goals but on the manner in which some pro-Israelis are publicly pursuing their purposes in the absence of solid facts of the Administration’s full intentions.

Pending a clearer outline of the Administration’s strategy it is being said, inadequately based attacks can only depress the special U.S.-Israeli relationship, create a platform for blaming Israel and American Jews for failure of the U.S. initiative, and result in a backlash with serious consequences for the Jewish communities.

Observers here have pointed out that while President Carter has set Presidential precedents in advocating a Palestinian homeland and compensation for Palestinians, the complete pattern of his thinking of a “fair and just settlement” has not yet crystallized. Outcries now, it is said, would be premature and may stifle his strategy for a settlement.

Against this is the belief that unless communal dissatisfaction with the Administration’s observed trend is explicitly made known to the White House governmental elements will systematically continue to extend into American policy the terms the Arab governments are demanding that effectively would ghettoize Israel within the Arab orbit. The time to block this pattern, it is thought, is before “suggested” U.S. proposals that could be trumpeted everywhere as “fair and reasonable” causes Israel to accept them to its detriment because “world opinion demands it”. Therefore the facts of Israel’s position must be declared with means available.

DELIBERATE TACTICS

At least some of the apprehension is considered to be deliberately fostered by tactics of intimidation to effect a lessening of support within the community and in Congress for Israel. Reduced support would therefore enable U.S. diplomats to press the Israeli government harder into abandoning positions it believes essential for its security. Hints of fear of anti-Semitism have already appeared in media here.

While the initial public relations onslaught against Israel is being blamed on the Likud victory and Menaghem Begin’s campaign statements, some observers here think that the Administration policy as it has been thus far unrolled would have been no different if the Labor coalition had retained power in Israel. Present U.S. policy is seen based on considerations of oil and conciliation of the Arabs and their Third World friends. Who is Prime Minister of Israel is immaterial.

Officially inspired intimidation to generate fear and capitulation to U.S. policy as conceived by Arabists within the U.S. foreign affairs establishment has appeared at critical junctures in previous U.S.-Israeli relations. In 1948, some of the most respected figures in the Jewish leadership seemed to have been persuaded to support positions against formation of the State of Israel during the almost successful campaign waged by Truman Administration Arabists to abort the birth of the Jewish State.

The State Department’s documentation of “Foreign Relations of the United States for 1948” published late last autumn, revealed officially incidents and assessment of divisions among Jews in the critical weeks before the Jewish State was proclaimed by David Ben Gurion on May 16, 1948.

In 1956, the Eisenhower Administration threatened to block Jewish contributions to Israel from the United States if the Israelis did not withdraw from the Sinai where it had entered with British and French agreement. Similarly, former Undersecretary of State George Boll recently advocated putting a halt to such contributions to bring about Israel’s withdrawal from the administered territories.