— A senior American Jewish leader said here that Israelis were “having pipe dreams” if they thought that the Reagan Administration was going to base its Middle East policy solely on a close security relationship with Israel.
Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, vice president of the World Jewish Congress, told the Board of Deputies of British Jews yesterday that although President-elect Reagan had “tremendous goodwill” for Israel
and the Palestine Liberation Organization would be a “non-starter” once he was in office, it would be wrong to presume that there would be no more problems between the Jewish State and the White House.
Hertzberg, who stopped here en route to next week’s World Jewish Congress assembly in Jerusalem, ridiculed Israeli commentators who had deduced from Reagan’s election statements that Israel would now be regarded as a “first class strategic asset” by America’s military thinkers.
Nothing that Reagan had been given a mandate to be tough with the Russians, Hertzberg said Reagan was probably the only American President who could go to Moscow to make a global agreement with the Soviet leadership. “At that moment I would worry about Israel,” Hertzberg added.
In the meantime, Israel’s friends in the United States would find that it would be “business as usual” with the incoming Administration and that they would have to “fight out the problems one by one,” he said. Hertzberg also noted that the Reagan transition team was strongly opposed to setting up a “Jewish desk” in the White House like that under the Carter Administration.
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.
