Conservative Jewish Groups Have Clout

The delayed reaction of the Bush administration to the peace initiative floated by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah has left many perplexed. With violence in the Middle East escalating daily, officials in Europe and the Arab world had beseeched Washington to intervene. The Saudi idea, which offers Israel normalized relations with the Arab world in return for a pullback to its 1967 borders, strikes many as at least a good starting point for discussion. Yet, the White House, while applauding the Saudi interest, was slow to take concrete action, waiting until Friday to send its special envoy, retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, back to the region. Various explanations for this have been advanced. The Saudi ideas were not a genuine proposal. The White House did not want to push the Israelis and Palestinians beyond the point they themselves wanted to go. Fighting terrorism remains the administration’s top priority, and the Israelis are a valuable ally in that fight.

But there’s another factor that has not received much attention: the disproportionate influence in Washington of a small number of quite conservative groups within the American Jewish community. There are dozens of Jewish groups in the U.S. directly concerned with Israel, and their views span the spectrum. But, in the end, only two really matter: the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, based in New York, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), based in Washington. Both groups have considerable clout with the Bush administration and have used it to push a policy toward Israel that is well to the right of the American Jewish mainstream.

According to public-opinion polls, most American Jews support an active U.S. role in promoting peace in the Middle East. Surveys taken in the late 1990s showed that more than 80% of American Jews wanted the United States to apply pressure to both sides to help reach a settlement. In recent months, as Israeli citizens have come under attack, Jews in this country have grown more conservative on the issue, but even so, an October 2001 survey, sponsored in part by New York’s The Jewish Week, found that 85% of American Jews believe it is important for the United States to become more involved in ending the violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Still, Jews with more hawkish views on Israel tend to be more politically active on the Mideast, and it is they who control the two groups with the most impact on U.S. foreign policy.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has a staff of only six and a budget of less than a million dollars, but it has an impressive board made up of the heads of 51 Jewish organizations. Among the largest are the Union of American Hebrew Organizations, which represents America’s estimated 1.5 million Reform Jews, and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents America’s estimated 1.5 million Conservative Jews. Both are traditionally liberal and supportive of actively pursuing peace in the Middle East, but they are outnumbered by the many smaller conservative groups on the conference’s board, and since each group gets one vote regardless of size, the influence of the larger, more liberal groups is easily neutralized.

It is a situation that suits the organization’s executive vice chairman, Malcolm Hoenlein. A dynamic and tireless activist who made his name working on behalf of Soviet Jewry, Hoenlein has very strong views on Israel. In conversation, he asserts the absolute right of Jews to settle the West Bank--or “Judea and Samaria” as he prefers to call the area, harking back to biblical names. For several years in the mid-1990s, Hoenlein served as an associate chairman for the annual fund-raising dinners held in New York for Bet El, a militant West Bank settlement that actively worked to scuttle the peace process with the Palestinians. As head of the Conference of Presidents, Hoenlein has developed ready access to the U.S. State Department, Defense Department and National Security Council, and he has used it to encourage the U.S. government to give unequivocal support to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon while shunning Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.

While Hoenlein concentrates on the executive branch, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee focuses on Congress. Long regarded as one of the most effective foreign-policy lobbies in Washington, AIPAC has an annual budget of $19.5 million, a staff of 130, and some 60,000 members. From its office near Capitol Hill, it researches issues, tracks legislation and lobbies Congress. Most of all, it gives money--lots of it. Between 1997 and 2001, the 46 members on AIPAC’s board together gave political candidates and parties well in excess of $3 million, or an average of more than $70,000 apiece. Many of its members give money as well. Much of this money is distributed through a network of pro-Israel political action committees. Recipients include many key members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, from Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer, Charles E. Schumer and Paul Wellstone to GOP Sens. Christopher S. Bond, J. Dennis Hastert and Trent Lott. It is not surprising, then, that Congress tends to go along with whatever AIPAC wants.

What AIPAC wants, meanwhile, is determined by its wealthy and powerful board of directors, which is united in its commitment to a strong Israel and to securing unwavering U.S. support for it. Since Sharon became prime minister, AIPAC has steadfastly backed him. With the United States coming under strong international pressure to rein in both Israelis and Palestinians, AIPAC has pressed the Bush administration to crack down on Arafat--and leave Sharon alone. Thus, last fall, when U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was preparing a new peace initiative with Zinni serving as a special envoy, AIPAC sent a memo to its members in the field, urging them to meet with their congressional representatives and press them to keep the administration off Israel’s back. The memo, notes a former AIPAC official, was part of “an aggressive campaign to get AIPAC members to call on their congressmen to put pressure on the administration not to send Zinni to the region. Their emphasis was clearly to try to minimize any effort by the administration to say Israel must exercise restraint.”

That effort has largely succeeded. Although Powell has recently been more critical of Israel, noting that “Prime Minister Sharon has to take a hard look at his policies and see whether they will work,” the White House still puts the bulk of the responsibility for ending the violence on Arafat, something both the Israeli government and the leaders of AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents have pushed for.

While neither group has yet taken a position on the Saudi peace proposal, Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which works closely with both groups, told The Jewish Week that Crown Prince Abdullah’s statement was “mostly a rehash of the old stuff. We’re not even sure he’s going to publicly offer it.” This is not the statement of a man truly interested in peace.

Needless to say, the United States has clear strategic and ideological reasons for supporting Israel and would no doubt do so regardless of any pressure from the organized Jewish community. The fact that Israel is the sole democracy in the region further cements its ties to this country. What’s more, the power of the Jewish “lobby” has often been exaggerated, especially in the Arab world. Nonetheless, the Bush administration’s inactivity at such a critical moment cannot be understood without taking into account the influence of AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents. In seeking to shield Israel from American pressure, these groups are making an epic miscalculation, one that in the end can only prove costly to Israel’s own interests, in terms of both its security at home and its image abroad.