Pollard Outrage : Jews in U.S. Start to Fault Israeli Acts

“I really think that the Jewish mother is a great danger to anybody’s sanity,” Abba Eban said one recent sweltering Sunday in Palm Springs, where he had come to address the American Friends of Hebrew University.

Eban was referring, of course, not to the parents of the tots splashing in the nearby hotel pool, but to the folkloric metaphor he uses nowadays to describe what he sees as the American Jewish community’s doting, uncritical stance toward the state of Israel. It is a stance Eban hopes began to change when Jonathan J. Pollard, an American citizen, was caught stealing U.S. government secrets and selling them to Israel.

Former Foreign Minister

Plunked down amid the freewheeling opulence of a resort hotel, having addressed yet another of what must by now be thousands of “events” on behalf of an Israel he has served as foreign minister and U.N. ambassador, this ever erudite expositor of the Zionist ideal suddenly seemed to be speaking of a movement that has lost its historical bearings.

“We Israelis think that because we were aggrieved by the Holocaust that we can do what the hell we like, that we can go around like this Iranian involvement and the Pollard involvement--there is always some headline, like stealing British passports. There’s a kind of feeling that the normal restraints of the international community don’t apply.

“I think American Jews are getting a little bit fed up being asked to support things that are hard to support, like our involvement in Iran and like this recent espionage case. They feel they are entitled to make their views known. They are not being what I call the Jewish mother, and that’s good. I think they are more outspoken, and it’s a good thing they’re being more critical.”

Outraged Reaction

The operative word here is outspoken, an accurate characterization of American Jewish leaders’ outraged reaction to the tawdry Pollard affair.

After his apprehension by the FBI, Pollard, a civilian employee of the U.S. Navy, pleaded guilty to treason and received a life sentence. His wife, Anne, who assisted in the espionage, was sentenced to two concurrent five-year prison terms. Initially, the Israeli government denied any responsibility for the spy ring to which he belonged, calling it a rogue operation. Then it admitted that two of Pollard’s Israeli contacts--Rafael Eitan, a top government intelligence operative, and air force Col. Aviem Sella--had been acting in an official capacity.

American Jewish leaders, who uniformly condemned both the Pollards and the Israeli government for its role in the case, were further outraged when Eitan and Sella were promoted to important new governmental jobs.

Israeli public opinion has rallied around the Pollards, with one major opinion poll showing that 90% thought their government should offer them support. In a much publicized Jerusalem Post article, Shlomo Avineri, a leading Labor Party intellectual and former director general of Israel’s foreign ministry, hit a sensitive nerve when he accused American Jewish leaders of exhibiting “a degree of nervousness, insecurity and even cringing . . . which runs counter to the conventional wisdom of American Jewry feeling free, secure and unmolested in an open and pluralistic society.”

Avineri’s comments, however, seem to miss the point about American Jewish leaders’ reaction to the Pollard case. Its character and duration suggest something more far-reaching than anxiety over ugly innuendoes of dual loyalty, which, in fact, have never materialized in the U.S. press or public opinion polls.

“The American Jewish reaction to the Pollard case and the Israeli government’s handling of it was so strong,” Hyman Bookbinder, a longtime Washington representative for the American Jewish Committee, noted, “that it led to a level of public dissent and criticism of Israel never before experienced.”

Building Support

Bookbinder added that, although in the past many individual American Jews were not at all reticent in their criticism of Israel, the leaders of established Jewish organizations, particularly those with Washington representatives who form part of the very effective lobbying effort on behalf of Israel, felt otherwise. They took it as their job to build support for Israel rather than diffuse it through public debate.

Privately expressed criticism, leader to leader, had occurred many times, but usually in only the most muted of tones--muted so as not to fuel the fires of Israel’s enemies; muted because it would be Israeli and not American Jewish blood that would be shed if errors occurred.

That concern remains, but there are signs that the timidity is gone. “The image of Israel which we carry in our minds is not reality,” were the startling words of Robert H. Asher, president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, at the pro-Israel lobbying organization’s annual convention in Washington last month.

‘Significant Change’

“I want to report to you my perception of the significant change in the relationship between Israel and the American Jewish community that is occurring,” he said.

“In the beginning the American Jewish community acted more as cheerleaders for Israel,” Asher noted, adding that it was a relationship that continued in that one-sided way through the early heroic days of the state’s founding, its military triumph in the Six-Day War and its early decades of startling economic achievement.

But then came the late ‘70s and the beginning of a reappraisal. “Up until this point,” Asher said, “the leadership of the American Jewish community approached Israel in an unsure way. For the most part any criticisms of Israel were left in the anteroom and were wiped out with a photo op in the prime minister’s office.”

“Did something go wrong?” Asher asked the assembled 1,800 delegates who represent Israel’s most active American supporters. “What happened? Well, what happened was very complex. Survival in the face of constantly hostile neighbors, the toll of fighting terror alone, both physically and psychologically, the draining military budget, the cost of absorbing 1.3 million Jews from Arab countries, created a life that was difficult to deal with and, yes, some mistakes were made.

‘Incredible Bureaucracy’

“Some of the altruism got shipwrecked on the rocks built by the pressure of daily living and the hope for an easier life. Israel developed an incredible bureaucracy; the country seemed to lose some of its direction, and the politicians pursued their own goals.”

Eban’s criticism is more pointed: “We are not a very beautiful society at this moment, let’s be frank. What’s there for them (American Jews) to emulate or admire? This is not a very beautiful period in Israel’s life.

“We are almost the last democracy to be ruling a foreign people,” he said, speaking of the Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip and the West Bank. “We don’t give them rights; that means that you banish; you blow up houses; you do all of the things which are necessary to preserve the situation.”

But the Pollard affair has been a far more serious source of estrangement between American Jewish leaders and Israel than either the lingering question of Palestinian rights or the earlier trauma of the Lebanon invasion. This, the critics seem to be saying, concerns not an error, egregious as it may be, of Israeli policy, but rather interference in the internal affairs of American life. And the reaction has been tougher than anything before.

‘Couldn’t and Wouldn’t’

“Once again the Israelis assumed that we would pull their chestnuts out of the fire,” said one top American lobbyist for Israel, “and they were shocked that we couldn’t and wouldn’t do it.”

“A watershed event” is the way Bookbinder and a score of other Jewish leaders described the aftermath of the Pollard case. Bookbinder, 71, is widely acknowledged as the dean of Washington lobbyists for what are referred to loosely as Jewish causes. He has done this for about 20 years but it took the Pollard case to raise issues that he thought long buried.

“It raises,” Bookbinder said in an interview, “some of the most basic questions (suggested) when Zionism was born dealing with the basic relation of a Diaspora Jew and an Israeli Jew.

“Up until Pollard we haven’t been compelled much to address this question. We had some differences between us and Israel, but never before a situation where we are required to make a decision between loyalty to Israel and to America.

‘Key Question’

“What made it the key question was Pollard’s insistence that he did it because he is a Jew and a friend of Israel and, therefore, it was incumbent upon him to steal secret documents.

“Well, who needs that? Who needed that kind of comment from him, because then you are saying, if you are a Jew and a Zionist and a friend of Israel, it’s incumbent upon you to do these anti-American kind of things.”

But Bookbinder is highly optimistic about the future and speaks of “a new relationship,” arguing that “Pollard did serve the useful purpose of freeing many American Jews from their past inhibitions about ever expressing disagreements with any Israel policy lest it hurt Israel.”

Bookbinder insists that there has always been much dissent within the Jewish community and cites the fact that Jewish writers and publications have in the past frequently maintained an independent voice. But not so the leaders of the community--like the presidents of major Jewish organizations who journeyed to Tel Aviv this past March with a publicly stated message of dissent over Israel’s conduct in the Pollard affair. That was a first.

Bookbinder was in that group and he refers to the effect of events on his colleagues as if it was the moment that the Cultural Revolution hit Beijing University:

“Most of the people who went on that trip had never permitted themselves to dissent from Israeli policy, fearing that such dissent could only add to Israel’s difficulties in facing a hostile world.

‘Criticism Did Contribute’

“But the honest, free exchange that week in Israel and since constitutes a watershed development in American Jewish-Israeli relations. Many of those who had never been able to bring themselves to accept an attitude of public dissent before Pollard now found it absolutely essential to join in criticism. And when they found that frank criticism did contribute to improved Israeli policy, and when they found that Israeli leaders could and did listen with respect, it is my judgment that these American Jewish leaders will never again return to the old pattern of silence and as a result we will have a more honest and easy relationship.”

The traditional concern to avoid meddling in Israel’s security prerogatives persists, but with the added caution that there is also a unique American Jewish interest that must be served.

“I believe that we in the American Jewish community should not interfere in those issues that truly affect the security of Israel,” AIPAC’s Asher said. “Our brethren in Israel must have the right to make those decisions because they will pay for them with their blood.”

But he added, “We have not only the right, but also the duty to speak honestly and directly to them on those issues that affect or concern us. We must speak out on the distasteful issue of Pollard and their handling of it.”

“A watershed event,” agrees Morris B. Abram, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. He himself took the unprecedented step of going public with his criticism of Israel’s handling of the Pollard case even before the meeting with Israel’s leaders. In a statement issued on the eve of his delegation’s departure for Jerusalem, Abram said: “The Pollard activities were inexcusable and offend all Americans.”

He noted in a recent interview that it was particularly galling for Israel to have promoted the two Israeli officials who ran Pollard as a spy despite the strong protest of the American Jewish community, not to mention the U.S. ambassador in Israel.

“I was absolutely frank. I stated my opinion to the leaders of Israel. . . . I said the appointment of Sella (who was given command of an important air base) was an irresponsible act and that he had to be removed at whatever cost, and he was removed.”

But for Abram it has ended well: “The way the Israelis addressed the issue . . . the appointment of a parliamentary committee. I don’t think that anyone in America has any doubt as to the bona fides of the man who headed the investigation, Abba Eban. If any Israeli is known in America and favorably, he is.”

Ambiguous Results

Eban’s Knesset investigation, along with another one conducted by the Israeli Cabinet, ended on an ambiguous note. Both reports managed somehow to condemn the top Israeli Cabinet officials for their role in the affair while absolving them of individual responsibility requiring their resignation and thereby averting a major new political crisis for the coalition government. For the moment, relations between Israel and the American Jewish community seem back to normal.

But Bookbinder has tempered his enthusiasm by noting that the top Israeli officials reacted negatively to what were fairly muted criticisms offered by the two governmental bodies investigating the Pollard case.

As a result, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was able to refer to the case as a molehill rather than a mountain, and Labor Party officials criticized Eban for betraying his own.

“It makes us pause,” Bookbinder said, “and ask, are the Israelis sliding back into the old pattern? We don’t have a definitive answer yet. Maybe after Shamir’s initial comment, maybe he realizes that’s a silly observation and careless.”

But Bookbinder conceded that “nothing goes on a straight line.” He expects no retreat from the new-found independence of American Jewish leaders. “The Diaspora-Israel relationship may have been affected more by Pollard than the relation of the Israeli and U.S. governments.”

As evidence of that shift, Bookbinder recalls that during their March visit the American Jewish leaders were “expressing disagreement with (Israeli officials) on the Pollard case but we were also reporting to them directly what was already clear to any observer: that in the Jewish community in America there was serious apprehension about the South African policies of Israel, as well as the policy of requiring Soviet Jews to have to go to Israel. We told them we are still unhappy that we haven’t got a good enough explanation of Israel’s involvement in the Iran- contra affair.”

For Eban, as with Bookbinder, the Pollard case was symptomatic of a far larger problem in determining the proper relation of the American Jewish Diaspora to the Jewish state of Israel.

Eban rejects the notion “that American Jews are subordinate or that we (Israelis) are the center and they are the circumference. . . . What are we the center of? They don’t read our literature. They don’t take their sustenance from us. We are two individual and separate historical incidents and there is no reason why one of them should be subordinate to the other.”

But there are certain ideals which the two communities have shared in the past. In his Palm Springs address, Eban listed three major Western ideas that he argued had been grafted onto historic Zionism, giving the movement much of its historic vitality. All, he charges, are under assault in modern Israel.

Through Chaim Weizmann’s efforts, according to Eban, Zionism came to be associated with the scientific revolution as opposed to religious mysticism; through Theodore Herzl’s influence, it took on an internationalist rather than narrow nationalist perspective, and through David Ben-Gurion’s leadership, Zionism acquired a democratic socialism and a commitment to social justice rather than the self-interest of the free market.

“Zionism is a universal movement,” Eban said in an interview. “It is not just Jewish, and now there is in Israel a tendency to cut us off from everything that is universal and non-Jewish and to get us within our own fundamentalist shell. The Zionist idea is nourished from outside the Jewish experience. We have to be democratic; we have to be scientific, and we have to have some idea of egalitarianism.”

All of which values Eban argues ought to be quite naturally supported by American Jews. He objected most strenuously to the traditional argument of many American Jewish leaders that they cannot become party to internal Israeli debates without weakening American support for the Zionist state.

“I would say on the contrary,” Eban said. “I think we want less docility and much more association to join in a critical dialogue and to point out those elements where Israeli performance is not compatible with American values. I don’t think that American Jews can be Jefferson Democrats and not care if Israel is ruling a foreign people.

“Our rule of the West Bank is more dangerous to us than any danger that comes from the Soviet Union, Syria, the Arabs, the PLO, because it is disruptive of our internal structure. We shall either become a Jewish minority or else we have to become a tyranny. We will either be Lebanon or we will be South Africa.

“The American Jews should join those of us in Israel who are fighting (these tendencies) and fight them in terms of American values. How do you support a state that intends to rule over 1.3 million people without rights, without votes?

“If you don’t care, that isn’t friendship, that’s apathy. It’s like a parent who says, ‘I don’t care whether you lead a decent life or you take drugs and end up in Skid Row.’ You’ve got to care. I think the more (American Jews) join the debate, the better it will be, and trying to suppress it in this artificial sort of self-congratulation is very bad.”

But joining the debate will not be a simple matter. In previous and simpler times the American Jewish community, like that of Israel, had little difficulty developing a consensus around the values outlined by Eban. But now both communities are more or less split down the center on key issues, beginning with the future of the West Bank.

“I agree with Eban,” Bookbinder said in a recent interview. “Resolving the West Bank issue is the big challenge to Israel, and any feeling that you can just stall and delay and in time everything will be all right is just absolutely wrong, in my judgment. We will have de facto if not de jure annexation. It’s a demographic threat, a military threat and a threat to democratic values. Retaining it indefinitely in the absence of a real agreement on how to live together will compel Israel to be less democratic than it is.”

‘Both Communities Are Split’

But then Bookbinder added the rub: “At least half of American Jews feel that way; both communities are split down the middle. There was much greater support for independence of the Palestinians 10 years ago than now.”

There is considerable evidence that it is not just on this issue that the splits in the American Jewish community may parallel the deepening ones within Israel itself.

That this is the case is supported by a recently completed survey of American Jewish attitudes toward Israel conducted for the American Jewish Committee by Steven M. Cohen.

As Cohen observes in the introduction to his study, in the past “Americans both Jewish and non-Jewish saw Israelis as young, tough, hard-working, idealistic pioneers, struggling in the midst of a backward and hostile world to balance a reverence for Jewish tradition with a socially progressive commitment to build a modern, democratic society and make the desert bloom.”

But in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and “increasingly during the last few years, the heavy news coverage of events in the Middle East has made it difficult for attentive observers to maintain a one-dimensional stereotype of Israelis.”

Contrasting Images

Instead, the report notes: “The single image of the Ashkenazi pioneer was supplanted by a multiplicity of contrasting images, left and right, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, rich and poor, secular and religious.”

As might have been expected, the survey turned up a very complex picture of the American Jewish community’s view of Israel. Most American Jews proclaim what the report termed “a deep sentimental attachment to the country and a concern for its survival.” But “despite their ongoing passionate commitment to Israel, most American Jews displayed a surprising ignorance about the fundamentals of Israeli society and politics. For example, only a third knew that Likud’s Menachem Begin and Labor’s Shimon Peres were from different political parties, and just a third knew that only Orthodox rabbis can perform Jewish marriages in Israel.”

This lack of knowledge might in part explain the contradictory and murky responses to questions concerning Israel’s foreign policy. Those surveyed were less likely to endorse territorial compromise with the Arabs than respondents to a similar survey in 1983. “Yet they were more accepting of Jewish criticism of Israel, felt more comfortable with Labor than with Likud leaders, and supported Israeli negotiations with Jordanians and Palestinians under certain conditions.”

Representative Sample

It’s not easy to survey American Jewish opinion because the sample size of Jewish respondents in most nationally conducted polls is too small to be statistically valid. For that reason the survey of the American Jewish Committee, which concentrates on a representative sample of a thousand Jewish households, is taken by Jewish leaders to be an important sounding of the community’s thinking.

It is, therefore, interesting that this most recent survey, even though conducted before the impact of the Pollard and Iran-contra affairs, offers a conclusion about American Jewish attitudes that could only have been made more relevant by those events.

“In sum,” the survey said, “the findings of the 1986 study highlight even more fully than earlier studies the complexity of American Jewish attitudes towards Israel. The stable aspects of the relationship attest to a deep and durable involvement with the Jewish state. But it is clear that the actions of Israel and its policy makers can play a crucial role in deepening or diminishing the attachment and involvement of specific elements of American Jewry with the Jewish state.”

Case Not Automatic

As translated by Rabbi David Saperstein, who lobbies in Washington on behalf of a range of Jewish concerns, including support for Israel, it means that the case for Israel is no longer automatic.

All of the Jewish leaders interviewed reaffirmed their strong commitment to Israel. And all noted that U.S. dollar support for Israel has never been higher. They tend to view the current strain as part of a maturing of the relationship between the Israeli and American Jewish communities rather than as an indication of diminishing American Jewish support. Uncritical public acceptance of every Israeli policy is a thing of the past.

“If Reagan has been the Teflon President then Israel has been the Teflon country,” Saperstein observed. “But after the Pollard affair that is no longer true.”

Times researchers Nina Green and Nona Yates contributed to this story.