Sen. Edward Zorinsky (D. Neb.), who died after suffering a heart attack last Friday night, was a supporter of Israel, but was not considered among the leading advocates of the Jewish State in the Senate.
One of eight Jews in the current Senate, Zorinsky frequently did not vote with Israel’s supporters, particularly when it came to arms for Saudi Arabia.
The most dramatic occasion was in the 1981 vote on the Reagan Administration’s sale of AWACs and other equipment to the Saudis.
Zorinsky had voted against the Carter Administration’s sale of F-15s to Saudi Arabia and had originally opposed the Reagan Administration sale of AWACs in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of which he was a member.
But after an 11th-hour meeting at the White House with President Reagan as the resolution to disapprove the sale was going to the Senate floor, he switched his vote to support the sale.
Since then, he approved all sales to the Saudis and voted last year against overriding Reagan’s veto of the Congressional resolution to reject the sale of missiles to the Saudis.
PRO-ISRAEL ACTIONS
However, Zorinsky did co-sponsor resolutions in 1983 and 1985 against selling arms to Jordan until King Hussein agrees to negotiations with Israel.
He also joined in as a co-sponsor of a 1984 bill calling for the United States to move its Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. But he did not sign a 1983 letter urging Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to return the Egyptian Ambassador to Israel.
Zorinsky, a conservative, frequently voted against the foreign aid bills, despite the appropriations for Israel. This went against a trend in Congress, where support for Israel is seen as the main factor for winning approval of the overall foreign aid program.
Zorinsky was born in Omaha on November 11, 1928, the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant. After doing postgraduate work at Harvard, he returned to Omaha to run his family’s wholesale tobacco and candy business.
He was elected Mayor of Omaha in 1973. A lifelong Republican, Zorinsky switched parties when he was not selected as the Republican candidate for the Senate in 1976. He won the Democratic Party primary and went on to become the first Jew to win a statewide election in Nebraska. He was re-elected in 1982 for a term that would have expired in 1988.
Zorinsky died after collapsing after performing in a song-and-dance routine at the Omaha Press Club. Funeral services were held Sunday in Omaha.
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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.
