February 1993, Page 60

Jews and Israel

By Sheldon L. Richman

New AIPAC Acting President

Steven Grossman, the new acting president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is a liberal Democrat who is moderately dovish on Israeli territorial issues. Grossman, 46, will succeed David Steiner, who resigned after being secretly taped while boasting of AIPAC's extraordinary influence with then candidate Bill Clinton's presidential campaign. After the taped telephone conversation was reported in the Washington Times, Steiner said he exaggerated the lobby's influence to impress the caller, Harry Katz, who taped the conversation with Steiner to expose what Katz called AIPAC's "disproportionate political power." (Katz's transcript of the conversation was published in the December 1992/January 1993 issue of the Washington Report.)

Grossman, the chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic party, was recommended unanimously as president by AIPAC's lobbying committee and is likely to be confirmed by the executive committee on Feb. 9. He assumed the duties of acting president in November and was to resign as state Democratic Party chairman upon confirmation in the AIPAC position. The Jewish weekly Forward reported that in 1980 Grossman was among 56 American Jewish leaders to sign a statement issued by Peace Now that criticized "extremists'' in the government of then Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Grossman has long been an officer of and contributor to AIPAC, and also has been active in other Jewish groups. He is seen as the key player in an effort to restore confidence in the beleaguered lobbying organization.

According to Washington Jewish Week (WJW), AIPAC officials hope that Grossman will be able to maintain good relations with the incoming Clinton administration and to effect a reconciliation with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Shortly after Rabin took office in 1992, he criticized AIPAC for creating problems between Israel and the Bush administration over the $10 billion in loan guarantees sought by the Jewish state. An Israeli Labor-related newspaper subsequently has called for the resignation of AIPAC Executive Director Thomas Dine.

Dine's predecessor as AIPAC executive director, Morris Amitay, who left the position under pressure in 1980, expressed doubt about Grossman's ability to solve the lobby's problems. "He may have the desire to fix things," he told WJW. "But at this point you've got people entrenched there for years who will still be there. It is a bit of an Augean stable."

In an interview with WJW, Grossman spoke of his "warm and cordial relationship" with Clinton and several of his foreign policy advisers. "I'll make a prediction," he said in the interview. "I think AIPAC and its leadership will develop over a period of time a somewhat more open, accessible style for a variety of constituencies. I'm a person who comes from the grass roots . . . I believe the strength of AIPAC, in terms of its future, lies in grass roots activism."

Grossman said the Steiner incident would be "cathartic" in that it will cause AIPAC to undergo a self-evaluation. On other issues, Grossman told WJW that allegations about AIPAC's opposition research operation, first aired by former AIPAC employee Greg Slobodkin in the Washington Report, were "overblown.''

"There's nothing wrong with maintaining a file of public information about individuals, organizations and what they say . . . about you and about the things they say that reflect upon your mission. Just knowing what others are doing is helpful in the way you see yourself and the way you see your mission.'' (Slobodkin's article, however, accused AIPAC of giving journalist Steven Emerson and other pro-Israel figures material from its "opposition research" files to smear their own critics as well as critics of Israel, including dovish American Jews.)

Grossman told WJW that people in Israel's Labor Party who think that AIPAC is pro-Likud have misunderstood AIPAC at times. ''The government of [former] Prime Minister Shamir was elected by the people of Israel," he said. "As such they're entitled to make their decisions. AIPAC tries to be as supportive of the relationship as we can. That's our primary mission. If that means that we have supported the policy of the government of Israel, about which there was some significant difference of opinion within Israeli political parties, I'm sure that did happen. "

Clinton Transition Official Comes Under Fire

Opposition has developed in the Jewish community (and within organized labor) to Johnnetta Cole, president of Spelman College and a key official in Bill Clinton's transition team. Cole, who has coordinated the transition "cluster" on education, among other issues, has come under fire for her involvement in left-wing organizations. According to the weekly Forward, Cole has worked with the Venceremos Brigade, a pro-Castro group, and the U.S. Peace Council, a Soviet front group. "The paper trail of Ms. Cole's writings and speeches suggests she has taken a grim, left-wing view of American life, arguing well into the 1980s for causes backed by such American enemies as Cuba, North Vietnam, and the Marxist-Leninist regime on Grenada," wrote Forward Associate Editor David Twersky. "The World Peace Council and its American arm have made common cause with some of the most anti-Israel elements of the Arab world. Absent from the picture is any indication that in the years leading up to her joining the Clinton transition Ms. Cole had a change of heart. "

The article quoted Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman as saying that the U.S. Peace Council was "one of the worst groups in carrying the Soviet, pro-PLO anti-Israel line." Foxman added that "unless she has had a radical change of heart, she continues to have a long history of championing extreme left-wing causes." He said Cole's role in the transition was "inappropriate."

A World Peace Council official told Forward that Cole's involvement with the organization ended in 1987. However, a Forward editorial called on Clinton to explain his selection of Cole as a transition official in light of "her relatively recent association with classical Communist front organizations hostile to American democracy.'' The editorial added that "if these sound like strong words, they are well within the traditions of this newspaper, whose Yiddish-language parent was an early and unremitting partisan in the fight to purge communism from the ranks of American labor."

Jewish Book Club Charged with Censorship

Former Ha'aretz editor Matti Golan charged the Jewish Book Club with "censorship" for canceling an order for 300 copies of his book, which is critical of American Jewish organizations. Golan said Nobel peace laureate Elie Wiesel also tried to get him to withdraw the book, entitled With Friends Like You: What Israelis Really Think about American Jews, published by the Free Press (see "Two important Books" on page 96). Wiesel denied the charge.

Golan said the Jewish Book Club canceled its order after Jewish leaders complained about the book, but club Editorin-Chief Arthur Kurzweil said he ordered the cancellation on his own after he read the book. He called it a "one-sided diatribe," according to Forward.

The newspaper said the book "derides American Jewish religious beliefs and attacks as hypocrites Americans who give money to Israel and the Israelis who take it. " In the book's introduction, Golan calls Wiesel a "worse enemy of mine than Yasser Arafat" because, as a spokesman for American Jews, he legitimates "the harm they do to Israel."

The book, which condemns American Jews for not moving to Israel, comes at a time when tension between Israeli and American Jews has bubbled to the surface. According to Forward, leading Knesset Laborite Avraham Burg recently told a group of American Jews that they should keep their money in the United States.

Sheldon L Richman is a Washington, DC-based regular contributor to the Washington Report.