News Analysis: Opposition Leader’s Appeals Fail to Move U.S. Jewish Groups

Ehud Barak came away from a weeklong visit to the United States having learned a hard lesson: when it comes to issues of security, American Jewish groups do not publicly criticize the elected government of the State of Israel.

“The majority of Americans, Jewish and otherwise, are not willing to take the responsibility of what is and what isn’t security,” said Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League.

In the company of three Knesset members from his Labor Party, Barak had come to delineate his strategy for advancing the deadlocked peace process and to detail the dangers he foresees in protracted negotiations with the Palestinians.

But the impassioned speeches of the Israeli opposition leader neither aroused enthusiasm nor provoked fear among Jewish leaders who historically have shied away from questioning the Israeli government’s position on security and from being drawn into the country’s political infighting.

The Labor delegation’s visit to Washington and New York came just days after the Knesset gave preliminary approval to a bill to dissolve the legislature and hold new elections. But even as Barak pushes his candidacy for prime minister, he was roundly criticized in Israel this week by some of his party colleagues for holding talks with Netanyahu on forming a national unity government.

Such seemingly conflicting developments highlight the quagmire of Israeli politics that U.S. Jewish groups, from the traditional center to the liberal left, want to avoid.

The Labor delegation did cause some controversy at an Aug. 3 meeting with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, when Knesset member Yossi Beilin called the pro-Israel lobby “an extreme right-wing organization.”

By the time the group arrived in New York, however, Barak was distancing himself from the insults, but maintained the charge that AIPAC does not go far enough to represent the spectrum of political views in what he called Israel’s “vibrant democracy.”

Foxman, who had called Beilin’s remarks “an attack” on the American Jewish community, said Barak had satisfactorily smoothed over the slight while in New York.

Foxman also said the delegation “got the attention of a segment of the American Jewish community” that did not fully understand the distinctions between the Labor and Likud parties’ approaches to the peace process.

So far, the organized Jewish community — including factions that historically have formed a vocal opposition to some Israeli government actions — has maintained a seemingly united front, holding out for Netanyahu to reach an agreement with the Palestinians on a further redeployment from the West Bank. The United States has suggested a pullback of 13 percent, a figure accepted by the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli-Palestinian talks were suspended last week after the murder of two Jewish settlers in the West Bank, but at the time Israeli officials said they were near an agreement — a claim the Palestinians deny.

In speeches delivered to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and to lay leaders from the ADL, the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress, Barak painted what one participant in the meeting described as a “bleak picture of Israel’s current regional and international situation.”

With the peace talks now deadlocked for almost a year and a half, Israel has become isolated in the world, Barak said, and relations with the United States have been damaged.

And while Netanyahu has hinged the entire peace process on issues of security with the Palestinians, Barak focused his addresses to Jewish leaders on threats from Iraqi and Iranian weapons development programs and from Hamas and other extremist Palestinian groups.

According to David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, Barak told an assembly of lay leaders from the AJCommittee, the AJCongress and the ADL: “I fear we’re headed for a prescription for disaster if we continue down this road. If you join me in this conclusion, I hope you will act accordingly.”

Beilin was even more pointed in his remarks to the group last Friday. Speaking with Jewish reporters after the meeting, Beilin said he told the lay leaders, “The majority of you are more open, moderate and dovish than what seems to be. The only thing you can do to help us is to express yourself.”

But it will take more than a prediction of violence to move the American Jewish community as a whole.

The executive director of the American Jewish Congress said that only if Israel were on the brink of “an overwhelming disaster” would there be a reconsideration of unified support for Israel’s elected leadership.

At the present time, Phil Baum suggested, “there is not a sufficiently imminent danger to force the American Jewish community” to tell Israel what to do.

Stressing his group’s eagerness to see a revitalized peace process, the AJCommittee’s Harris said, “I think the American Jewish community’s role is important, but frankly it is not a role that can avert catastrophe. We have to be realistic about the role we can play and the claims we make about our own work.”

So long as Israel and the Palestinians maintain diplomacy, be it “table or telephone diplomacy, if the parties are engaged with one another, and America is playing a useful facilitating role, you’re less likely to hear vocal static,” Harris said.

Some Jewish leaders faulted the Labor Party itself for failing to deliver a clear message to American Jews.

“Why haven’t you seen a more active American Jewish community, especially among those who have been on the liberal side of the spectrum?” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

“Part of it has to do with the ineptness of the opposition in Israel. When there are alternative voices emerging from the Israeli political scene, clearly outlining issues and suggesting alternatives, that tends to mobilize the American Jewish community,” he said.

Just the same, rumblings are beginning to be heard, with some planning a break from the overall consensus.

“There are a lot of concerned American Jews who I think are scared to death about the collapse of the peace process,” and the establishment of a Palestinian state, Yoffie said.

He added that conversations have begun among those Jews about what possible action to take if there is no breakthrough in peace talks.

But even those groups who are strong supporters of the Oslo accords, including the Israel Policy Forum, say it is too soon to speak out against the Netanyahu government.

“Everyone agrees on one thing: to give the negotiations every possible chance to work,” said Tom Smerling, the IPF’s Washington director.

“Everybody across the board in our community, I believe, will applaud the Netanyahu government if they reach an agreement” on a redeployment, he said.

Furthermore, with the longevity of Israel’s government now in question, as a result of calls for early elections, few American leaders are eager to join the fray.

“Everybody’s waiting for the Israeli political process to shake itself out and when the dust settles, then groups here are more likely to be taking positions,” Smerling said.