Shamir Accuses American Jewish Group of Meddling in Israel’s Foreign Affairs

Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir criticized American Jewish leaders Friday for what he said was their harmful meddling in international political issues best left to the Israeli government.

In an interview published by the English-language Jerusalem Post, Shamir attacked the American Jewish Congress as a “peanut-size organization” which had allowed itself to be used by Arab leaders “to score points against us.”

A 20-man AJC delegation headed by the organization’s president, Theodore Mann, and its co-chairman, Henry Rosovsky, recently held an unprecedented series of talks in Cairo and Amman with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Hussein and other leaders of the two countries.

Shamir also questioned the competence of Edgar M. Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, to involve himself in international relations. He said the WJC should confine itself to “philanthropic frameworks.”

Also Met Gorbachev

Bronfman met with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Moscow this week to discuss restraints on Soviet Jewish emigration and to deliver a written personal message from Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. The WJC leader has refused to disclose details of the meeting.

A Foreign Ministry official who sat in on the Jerusalem Post interview said that Shamir was most upset about the American Jewish Congress mission, but that he also regarded as unnecessary the use of Bronfman as an intermediary. The official confirmed the substance of the interview as published.

According to the Post, Shamir said the dispute concerns a matter of principle, and added, “The world must know that Israel represents the Jewish people on Jewish problems.”

Shamir’s blast appeared to take representatives of the American Jewish organizations by surprise.

“I thought it would be the better part of wisdom that he wouldn’t do that,” an official of one of the organizations said.

Lobby for Israel

These same American Jewish leaders, he noted, support Israel in Congress on such issues as increased U.S. financial aid and opposition to U.S. arms sales to Jordan.

Kenneth Bialkin, head of the Presidents’ Conference, which brings together the leaders of all the major U.S. Jewish organizations, discussed the dispute with Shamir on Friday, according to a Foreign Ministry source.

The source said Shamir stressed that Israel welcomes American Jewish involvement here, except in the case of political negotiations, which are “strictly the domain of the elected Israeli government.”

The AJC mission to Egypt and Jordan stirred controversy from the moment it was learned that it was being planned, according to officials here. The AJC delegation “raised the issue before they went,” a Foreign Ministry source said, and “were told that we didn’t think their talks with Jordan would be helpful.”

However, senior government officials said Friday, Shamir and Peres agreed not to actively oppose the trip so long as the American Jewish leaders made it clear that they were not empowered to speak for Israel.

Unexpected Criticism

The American Jews were thus surprised, in their first meeting after arriving in Jerusalem from Amman earlier this week, when David Kimche, the Foreign Ministry director general, read them a statement expressing the ministry’s displeasure.

Shamir was finishing an official visit in Japan that day and did not meet the AJC group. Upon his return, according to the Jerusalem Post, Shamir “did not conceal his anger at what he plainly feels are two incursions upon Israel’s prerogative to speak for itself and for world Jewry.”

The Post quoted Shamir as saying of the AJC mission: “Who elected them? Who empowered them to enter into negotiations on the Israel-Arab conflict? They merely serve as instruments in the hands of the Arabs to score points against us.”

The rightist newspaper Hatzofeh also criticized the mission in an editorial Friday, calling it “unnecessary and damaging.”

“Their visit,” the Hatzofeh editorial said, “will be exploited by the Arab countries in order to prove that they’re not the ones preventing peace, but the state of Israel, which is putting forth difficult conditions for negotiations over a Middle East settlement--conditions which they can’t accept.”

Dissent Unwelcome

An informed source who requested anonymity complained that Israel treats these groups as partners “as long as the Jewish organizations are toeing the line of the party in power.”

This source argued that it is ultimately in Israel’s interest that the American Jewish groups maintain some independence. “It hurts Israel if we are seen just as parrots of Israel’s policy,” he said.

Shamir, who has requested a meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze in New York during the U.N. General Assembly that opens next week, also opposed the use of Bronfman to send a message to Gorbachev, according to Israeli sources.

Shamir and Peres, although they serve together in a fragile “national unity government,” are longtime political rivals. Peres heads the center-left Labor Alignment, Shamir the rightist Likud Bloc.

Uncomplimentary Epithet

According to the Jerusalem Post, Shamir “cast doubt on Bronfman’s understanding of international relations and used a strongly uncomplimentary epithet to describe (Bronfman’s) aide, Israel Singer.”

“What do they understand?’ Shamir was quoted as saying.

Ironically, pro-Peres sources said, Shamir has in the past used Armand Hammer, the American oil magnate, as an intermediary in dealings with Moscow.

The Israeli press reported Friday that the message Bronfman relayed to Gorbachev from Peres mentioned the possibility of resuming the diplomatic ties broken after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. However, senior government sources said, the letter was written in general terms and repeated longstanding Israeli positions.

The American Jewish Congress is a New York-based political action organization concerned with a wide range of Jewish and human rights issues. It has a membership of about 50,000. The World Jewish Congress is based in Geneva and concerns itself particularly with the fate of Jews in endangered communities around the world.