COLUMN ONE : Tensions High for U.S. Jews : The community has anguished over this war. After the attacks on Israel and with American soldiers at risk, many worry about how others will view their role.

For the past quarter-century, America’s Jewish community has been decidedly dovish. By and large, American Jews opposed U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia and, subsequently, in Central America.

But the Persian Gulf conflict--which has pitted America and its allies against a well-armed expansionist who has been compared to Adolf Hitler and who threatens Israel’s survival--has created extraordinary tensions for many American Jews.

Ever since Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, the American Jewish community has felt deep anguish. It felt caught in the middle when some critics suggested war could be averted and lives of American soldiers spared if Israel showed more flexibility on Palestinian issues.

And now, in the wake of Iraqi missile attacks on Israel, it feels caught in the middle over another question: Whether Israel should sit still to protect an allied coalition that includes some of its worst enemies, particularly Syria, or retaliate, possibly set off a far wider war and then be viewed as a spoiler of America’s carefully crafted strategy against Iraq.

“The Jewish community’s being whipsawed just like everybody else,” says Joel H. Meyers, executive director of The Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis. “Everybody at this moment feels the anxiety of the war.”

To be sure, major Jewish organizations have supported President Bush’s hard-line policy toward Iraq, including his decision to go to war this week. And its leaders are now united in their belief that only Israel can determine what constitutes a real threat to its national security and what is an appropriate response, politically as well as militarily.

From the day Iraq invaded Kuwait, most Jews have felt that U.S. and Israeli interests have dovetailed in the effort to thwart Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s bid for hegemony in the strategically sensitive Middle East. And they have applauded Israel’s self-restraint in following the United States’ request that it remain on the sidelines--even as Hussein vowed to make the Jewish state his first target in case of an allied attack.

But there has been deep disagreement among Jews over how far America should go to use force as an instrument of national policy. And there has been anxiety--most often expressed privately--over the specter of anti-Semitism, a concern within the Jewish community whenever there is widespread social upheaval.

Ever-sensitive to charges of divided loyalty--to Israel and America--some American Jewish organizations quietly wrestled over how loudly they should raise their voices on this issue in the months before last week’s congressional vote on the use of force against Iraq. Numerous activists say the community’s voice was muffled because of concern that, if a war went badly, some would seek to make Israel and even American Jews the scapegoat.

“In any war, we are always the first victims,” says Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the parent body of Reform Judaism. “There’s some concern that if somebody gets killed, we’ll get blamed.”

In the wake of Iraq’s assaults on Israel, some Jewish leaders also expressed frustration with the widely held notion that if Israel decides to counterattack it might fracture Arab support for the multinational alliance.

“If this coalition is so fragile that a response from Israel can bring about its collapse--which I don’t believe it will, at least with respect to Saudi Arabia and Egypt--then I think we have to reevaluate it for what it is, or at least Syria’s membership for what it is,” said David Harris, executive vice president of the American Jewish Committee.

“In the final analysis, Israel does have a very good reading of the region,” Harris said. “Quite frankly, the world--including the United States--ought to have paid more attention to Israel’s reading of the region, including Iraq, over the past several months and years.”

Despite disagreements over how best to respond to Hussein, most of America’s 5.8 million Jews regarded him as a menace long before the first high-explosive Scud missiles landed in Tel Aviv and Haifa.

For months, in synagogues across the nation, Jews prayed for peace--and for an outcome to the gulf crisis that would declaw the aggressive Iraqi leader.

The issue is a sensitive one. For many Jews--whose world perspective has been shaped by the searing recollection of the Holocaust that followed Western efforts to appease Hitler in the 1930s--Hussein gave chilling immediacy to the post-World War II cry, “Never Again!”

In the days and weeks leading up to Wednesday’s attack on Iraq, mainstream Jewish organizations had pulled together to support Bush’s hard-line policy--including the possible use of force--to drive Hussein from Kuwait. Among them was the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, which represents 46 such groups.

Jewish leaders, while insisting they did not beat the drums for war, say they feared that any settlement of the crisis that left Hussein with his offensive firepower would only forestall the day of reckoning with him, possibly at such time as he had acquired nuclear weapons. Many saw the attacks on Israel, a determined bystander in the conflict for the past 5 1/2 months, as confirmation of this concern.

“Had the Western nations responded to Hitler with resolve early on, when he entered the Rhineland, there would have been no World War II with its 50 million casualties, and one-third of the Jewish people would not have become wisps of smoke or blackened ashes,” said Reform Rabbi Schindler. “While war has a fearsome price, compromise also has a fearsome price.”

Rabbi Binyam Walfish, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America, the world’s largest Orthodox rabbinic organization, said in the hours after Iraq’s initial attack on Israel that the moral imperative, according to Jewish law, is that “where evil exists, you have to uproot it. We’re getting a very abject lesson in evil.”

Still, these organizations do not speak for all Jews. Liberal American Jewish groups, such as Americans for Peace Now and the New Jewish Agenda, supported continued reliance on sanctions before the allied attack on Iraq. Other Jews have been active in anti-war efforts from Los Angeles to New York.

“It is an emotionally charged issue for Jews because it is the Middle East and they are very worried about Israel,” said Lois Levine, co-chairwoman of the left-wing New Jewish Agenda, which opposes military action. “For many Jews who are normally anti-war, and very outspokenly so, this issue is really tearing them apart.”

Adds David Cohen, a liberal Washington lobbyist affiliated with Peace Now: “The community is totally unified about protecting Israel. The debate is over the best approach for America and its responsibilities in achieving a secure Middle East and a secure Israel.”

These anti-war Jewish groups--some of which are aligned with the peace movement in Israel--continued to call for an international conference to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute before the outbreak of hostilities. And they said they would have welcomed such a move to avoid war in the gulf.

Dismantling Hussein’s offensive capability, as well as Arab recognition of Israel’s right to secure borders, would have to be part of any negotiations that result in the establishment of a Palestinian homeland and lasting peace, they say.

This approach is anathema to mainstream Jewish groups, as well as to the Israeli government and the Bush Administration. They have vehemently rejected Hussein’s attempts to link his occupation of Kuwait to the Palestinian question, an issue he raised well after the invasion.

“There is no connection between the two,” the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations said in its Jan. 9 policy statement. “The true similarity is between Kuwait as the victim of Iraqi aggression in 1990 and Israel as the victim of Arab aggression in 1967. The difference is that Kuwait was overrun and Israel successfully resisted an unprovoked attack by Arab states.”

In fact, Jewish leaders point out, it was Hussein’s uneasy Arab neighbors--Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria--who were most militant in urging the United Nations coalition to repel Iraq.

Some activists say the Jewish groups’ long delay in taking a public position on the Persian Gulf crisis reflects an initial reluctance to establish too high a profile on the issue.

Until recently, “the Jewish community stayed silent as an organized community, not wishing to give the impression in any way that their interest and concern for the survival of the state of Israel would dictate what United States policy should be,” said Ann Lewis, co-director of the hard-line Committee for Peace and Security in the gulf and the former political director of the Democratic National Committee.

Lewis maintains this was a mistake: “The minute you are willing to censor yourself from saying things you believe in, that’s a victory for the forces of tyranny,” she said.

Some Jewish leaders play down such concerns, saying the mainstream Jewish groups merely followed in the footsteps of the policy advocated by Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III--generally perceived as no great friends of Israel--and the United Nations. They say that extremists seize any opportunity to make such assertions but that most Americans will dismiss them as groundless.

But others complain that charges, however groundless, by some prominent conservative columnists, particularly Patrick J. Buchanan, that the pro-Israeli lobby exercises undue influence on American foreign policy have had a chilling effect on Jewish groups and individuals.

In late August, Buchanan said on “The McLaughlin Group,” a televised political talk show: “There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East--the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States . . . The Israelis want this war desperately because they want the United States to destroy the Iraqi war machine.” Buchanan, an early and vocal critic of U.S. involvement in the gulf, also denounced Congress as “Israeli-occupied.”

At the same time, some war protesters on the left have sought to portray Israel’s hard-line policy toward the Palestinians as the cause of the war. “At anti-war rallies I hear a kind of Israel-bashing that I find totally unacceptable,” says Michael Lerner, editor and publisher of Tikkun, a liberal Jewish magazine. It takes the form of “stereotyping that Israel is manipulating the U.S. and the U.S. is acting solely for Israel.”

Lerner adds: “As the body bags start to arrive from Saudi Arabia, it’s not unlikely that some people will follow Saddam’s lead and talk about ‘the Jewish war.’ ”

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a lobbying group and particular target of Buchanan and others, kept an unusually low profile during the congressional vote on the gulf, lawmakers said. Still, AIPAC lobbied some lawmakers who were among the last to take a position, sources said.

Buchanan’s assertions were ludicrous, said Malcolm I. Hoenlein, executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The split congressional vote on use of force “further debunks those who have tried to assert that this is a ‘Jewish’ thing,” he said.

“Jews have played a role like all other Americans,” Hoenlein asserts. “We’re concerned about the safety of American troops. We’re concerned about American interests. And we’re concerned about a ruthless dictator.”

And, he acknowledges, Jews are also concerned about the security of Israel, in addition to Hussein’s other potential Middle East targets.

Among those who were most outspoken about the dangers posed by Hussein were California Reps. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), who had sponsored a bill to impose sanctions against Iraq before the invasion, and Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica). Although both lawmakers are key allies of Israel, each has sought to sound the alarm about the dangers posed by the proliferation of arms in the volatile Middle East.

“The Jewish community is much more supportive generally of the need to confront Saddam Hussein,” Levine said hours before the war began. But, he added: “There are deep divisions within the Jewish community as well”--especially among those who had opposed the Vietnam War and U.S. involvement in Central America.

In the week before Wednesday’s allied attack on Iraq, Berman, Levine and fellow Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Anthony C. Beilenson of Los Angeles--all of whom represent districts with large, politically active Jewish populations--reported receiving hundreds of calls opposing the immediate use of American firepower.

In Congress, Jewish lawmakers were uncharacteristically divided on the crucial question of whether to use force against Hussein. Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) led the charge for hard-line Democrats who voted to authorize Bush to use force. However, a slim majority of Jewish lawmakers voted to prolong sanctions.

In the Senate, five Jewish members voted against authorizing the President to use force; three voted to give him such authority. In the House, 17 opposed the resolution sought by Bush; 16 supported it. Jewish Democrats voted for sanctions by a 2-1 margin. All eight Jewish Republicans lined up behind Bush.

Some of Israel’s staunchest supporters, including Sens. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Reps. Lawrence J. (Larry) Smith (D-Fla.) and Howard Wolpe (D-Mich)., actively lobbied to continue sanctions.

Lieberman reflected the sensitivity of the religious issue, declining, through a spokesman, to talk about the position of the Jewish community on the Persian Gulf.

“He’s been reluctant to discuss the issue on that point,” said Press Secretary James E. Kennedy. “He’s been doing what he’s been doing because he feels it’s in the best interests of America. It has nothing to do with his religion or ethnicity.”

The four liberal Jewish lawmakers from Los Angeles--all opponents of the Vietnam War, all supporters of Israel--were split as well. Berman and Levine voted to back Bush; Waxman and Beilenson said that sanctions should be given more time to work.

In each instance, the lawmakers emphasized, they cast their votes, first and foremost, on the basis of America’s goals. And lawmakers on both sides of the vote maintained that, despite the position of the major Jewish groups, it was uncertain whether Israel’s interests would be best served by backing the use of force.

First, they noted, in the event of hostilities, Hussein had vowed to attack Tel Aviv with chemical weapons in a bid to turn the conflict into an Arab-Israeli war and splinter the United Nations coalition. Some said that the dangers to Israel went well beyond such threats.

“War there is the worst possible thing for Israel,” Beilenson contended before the allied attack on Iraq. “For anybody to suggest that the Israelis would be safer in a Middle East that’s stirred up and destabilized by a war is foolhardy on the face of it (especially) if you have tens of millions of Islamic fundamentalists stirred up in a frenzy and hatred.”

At the same time, Waxman says that diplomacy also has its risks for the Jewish state.

“Israel could get sold out either way,” he said before the conflict began. “There could be a diplomatic settlement at Israel’s expense or a cease-fire at Israel’s expense. There is a lot of anxiety in the Jewish community over and above the anxiety everybody’s going through at this moment.”

Any outcome--including a military defeat--that leaves Hussein in a position to become a hero in the Arab world for standing up to the West, is also exceedingly worrisome to many Jewish leaders. In addition, some are concerned that America’s temporary alliance with Syrian President Hafez Assad, who also is committed to the destruction of Israel, during the gulf crisis could lead the United States to turn a blind eye toward his transgressions when the conflict ends.