‘What Now, Israel?’ Asks California’s Jewish Community : Foreign Relations: Jewish leaders in California have mixed views about events in Israel since the Shamir government fell.

Among California Jewish leaders, there may be as many opinions about the current political crisis in Israel as there are political parties in that country’s Parliament, the Knesset.

“I can’t imagine anyone being happy” about the fall of the Israeli government, said liberal Peace-Now activist Stanley Sheinbaum. “Because if ever Israel should be in a situation to deal rationally with the problems it’s facing, this kind of political turbulence precludes getting to the resolution of its problems.”

“I have a sense that nobody is really unhappy,” noted Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, the largest Conservative congregation in Los Angeles, who sees in turbulence a political opportunity. “I’m just hoping that Israel is going to be fortunate enough to be swept up with the Gorbachev-ian revolutions, and that a courageous and innovative statesmanship will prevail.”

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s government fell Thursday night in a vote of no-confidence--the first in the nation’s nearly 42 years of independence--over failure to accept the Secretary of State James A. Baker III’s plan to start peace talks with the Palestinians.

Whoever eventually wins out--whether Israel’s Labor Party opposition under Shimon Peres or the rightist Likud Party under Shamir, now the caretaker prime minister--Sheinbaum is worried that the fracture of the Israeli government may give undue influence to the Orthodox religious parties. “The failure to separate church and state, that is to keep religion out of politics, will always bode badly for Israel or any society.”

As for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, he added that “if it’s another national unity party (that replaces the old government), you’re going to get that same excruciating 1/8 of an inch forward and 1/16 of an inch backward.”

The shaky Likud-Labor coalition unraveled last Tuesday after Peres, who had been demanding that Shamir accept the peace plan, was fired as deputy prime minister and finance minister. The 10 other Labor ministers promptly resigned, and Labor instigated the motion for no-confidence. The government fell after five of six members of the Orthodox Shas Party abstained on the no-confidence vote, denying Shamir five key votes he needed to sustain the government.

Schulweis figures the situation “may turn out to be a blessing,” that it will provoke “a consensus in that society that there has to be an alternative to this deadlock. It’s sort of not fair to keep Israel and the Middle East behind all the winds of change (blowing) from Haiti to Eastern Europe. . . .”

But Rabbi Elazar Muskin of Young Israel of Century City, an Orthodox congregation of “200 families,” believes “this is an internal issue for Israel to resolve. I don’t think we should meddle. They are going to resolve it in a democratic fashion, I am positive.”

What happens in Israel is watched closely here. Los Angeles is the second largest Jewish community “in the world ,” said Neil Sandberg, Western regional director for the American Jewish Committee. It’s also a vital stop for supporters of Israel on fund-raising missions.

There was near unanimity among California Jewish leaders interviewed that President George Bush helped provoke the crisis when he recently linked U.S. opposition to new settlements in the West Bank, which the U.S. has long opposed, with settlements in East Jerusalem, which haven’t been a matter of public debate.

Many Jews fear that, if new settlements in the Israeli capital become an issue in the peace talks, Jerusalem, considered by them the heart of their nation, could be divided--as it was until the 1967 Six-Day War.

Asked his position on the occupied territories at a news conference March 3, Bush said: “My position is that the foreign policy of the United States says we do not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem.”

Although the White House later sought to calm the waters, saying Bush supports “a united Jerusalem whose final status is determined by negotiations,” his initial remarks stung.

In the opinion of George Caplan, president of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, “the comments the President made in the last couple of weeks regarding East Jerusalem, characterizing or implying that it was an open issue that would become part of the negotiations . . . had an adverse impact on the ability of the coalition government moving forward and accepting the plan.”

The government collapse “also comes at a bad time for another reason. The government has its hands full with Russian emigration,” Caplan said, referring to the large number of Soviet Jews emigrating to Israel after the lifting of Soviet restrictions.

Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky pointed to the “complicity of the Bush Administration” in the Israeli government collapse. “Some of the more moderate elements were moving toward following the Baker peace plan. . . . Jimmy Carter found out when he was President, (attacks) don’t promote flexibility.”

Rabbi Harvey J. Fields, senior rabbi of the Reform Wilshire Boulevard Temple and chairman of the Federation Council’s Middle East Commission, said Bush’s remarks were “the last contributing factor that brought down the house.”

They undoubtedly raised fears in Israel, he said, as to “just what kinds of pressures might be put on Israel regarding the status of Jerusalem.”

Rep. Mel Levine (D-Los Angeles) noted that there has been “strong support in the American Jewish community for implementation of the peace process.” Now, he said, keeping the “negotiations on track remains extremely important, but will require some reassurance from an Administration that has shaken the confidence of Israelis across the political spectrum.”

Even Sheinbaum, who angered many in the Jewish community by his controversial meeting with PLO chairman Yasser Arafat in Stockholm 15 months ago--the meeting at which Arafat said he recognized the state of Israel--was upset by Bush’s comments.

“Who needed that?” said Sheinbaum. “There was a tacit understanding to keep that as far back on the back burner as possible. His remarks strengthened the hands of those who don’t want the peace process to move forward.”

But Michael Lerner, editor of the Oakland-based liberal Tikkun, the largest circulation Jewish magazine in the nation, doesn’t blame Bush. The old coalition government, he said, had “produced a year and a half of no action on peace, a year and a half in which many more Palestinians were killed and (there was) no forward movement. Nothing that comes next could be significantly worse.”

At the same time, Lerner said it was “a delight to see the religious parties playing a role in bringing down Shamir,” referring to the role of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Shas Party. “For those of us who are religious--and I am--it breaks the unfair stereotype that religious people are all political reactionaries, that they are really anti-peace. . . . It totally undermines those right-wingers in America who claim that Bush has ruined everything by his statement.

“I think many American Jews are privately rejoicing” about the government’s fall, he concluded.

“Even if a right wing government were to take over,” Lerner added, “Labor would be freed of its self-imposed shackles and gag that prevented Labor from building popular support. And that right wing government would be under considerable pressure to do a Nixon in China or a Begin with Sadat move.”