PUBLIC RELATIONS : Group Hopes to Sell U.S. Jews on Israel-PLO Pact

For Havi Scheindlin, vice president of Americans for Peace Now, there are deeply troubling questions as she sees many American Jews criticizing and even actively opposing the agreement Israel reached with the Palestine Liberation Organization on Palestinian self-government:

How can American Jews oppose peace in the Middle East? How can they be against an agreement, at long last, between Israel and the Palestinians?

“Once again, American Jews are ready to fight to the last Israeli,” Scheindlin said angrily. “They just don’t understand what this agreement means to Israelis, why it has won the support of most Israelis, what it means for the future of Israel, the Palestinians and the whole Middle East.”

To give Americans--”not just Jews, but first of all Jews”--such an Israeli prism through which to assess the agreement on Palestinian autonomy, Scheindlin is completing a 20-minute documentary film with Carol Polakoff, an Emmy-winning producer and director and a Los Angeles board member of Americans for Peace Now, on the search for peace.

“If American Jews could put themselves in the place of Israelis who send their kids into the army, of women whose husbands and sons are called up for reserve duty, of families whose whole lives have been shaped by war and conflict, they would begin to understand,” Scheindlin, a longtime Jewish and political activist in Los Angeles, said as filming finished here.

The position of American Jewry on this accord and future agreements Israel reaches with its Arab neighbors is important, Scheindlin and others believe, because of the strong influence exerted both in Washington and in Israel by what remains the world’s largest Jewish community.

“The people of Israel decided upon a strategic turn in our (parliamentary) elections in June, 1992, but American Jews continued in many, many respects along the same course Likud (now the main opposition party) had set during its 15 years in power,” Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin commented recently. “In their desire for a secure Israel, American Jews accepted uncritically and absorbed totally the Likud approach. . . . The result has been a divergence as we have pursued the peace process. This is a gap we need to close.”

After ignoring the Diaspora for most of his first year in office, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin belatedly began courting it several months ago, and most top leaders in the U.S. Jewish community endorsed the agreements that Israel signed with the PLO this month.

Scheindlin’s focus now is building support throughout the Jewish community to underpin that backing.

The film, commissioned by Americans for Peace Now with a budget of just $25,000 but also with the volunteer efforts of Polakoff, editor Stuart Rickey and others, was conceived before the agreements, but it was shot as Israel and the PLO recognized each other and then signed the accord.

“We shot without a script but with people, Israelis and Palestinians, speaking from their hearts,” Scheindlin said. “The hopes, the fears, the dreams, the anguish, the conflict, the reconciliation--they are all there.”

In one scene, Israeli and Palestinian youths, members of an encounter group, engage in a no-holds-barred dialogue that shows, even as they argue over the rights and wrongs of the Middle East conflict, that they kept on talking.

In another, two Israeli soldiers, sitting across from a Palestinian refugee camp, discuss their experiences in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip--and the resulting brutalization of a whole generation of Israelis.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Peace Now leader Tzali Reshef, novelist Amos Oz, industrialist Dov Lautman and politicians Yossi Sarid, Yael Dayan, Dedi Zucker and Beilin all speak of their hopes for peace.

But according to Scheindlin, the heart of the documentary, intended for wide distribution through the Conference of Presidents of American Major Jewish Organizations starting in November, will be ordinary Israelis in their homes, on their farms and in small groups.

“We want as many people to see it as possible so that they will be touched,” Scheindlin said. “And, as time goes on, as people see the hope and joy on both sides, the Jewish community in the U.S. will come round and realize that what Israelis want is what they want.”