Still Stunned by 1994 Election Results, Israel's Supporters Worry About 1996

By Lucille Barnes

"I think we're pretty safe. We have support in Congress and in the White House. The problem is the American people who are definitely against foreign aid for economic reasons. But with two out of the three major decision-making components, I think we're pretty safe."

—Israeli government spokesman Uri Dromi, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 23, 1994.

American supporters of Israel, aware that roughly four out of five American Jews consistently vote for and sometimes contribute funds to Democratic candidates, suffered panic attacks after the Republican sweep in the Nov. 8, 1994 elections. (Exit polls indicate that between 78 and 86 percent of U.S. Jews voted for Democrats in the 1994 congressional elections and that 85 percent of Jews voted for Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1992.)

Despite a flood of hopeful reports in weekly Jewish community newspapers around the country about long-time Jewish supporters of Republican candidates and causes like industrialist Max Fisher of Detroit and Matthew Brooks of the Republican party's National Jewish Coalition, leaders of major Jewish organizations seemed to be preparing for legislative setbacks. These might include congressional term limits, campaign finance reform, a balanced budget amendment, a line item veto for U.S. presidents and reduced aid for Israel—all closely related "Israel agenda" items. They might also include setbacks in broader "Jewish agenda" items such as changes in immigration and refugee legislation (40,000 Jewish immigrants still arrive in the U.S. each year for preferential treatment as refugees from the former Soviet Union), Jewish opposition to prayer in public schools and to the display of religious symbols on public property, and Jewish support for abortion rights and gun control.

By contrast, Israeli leaders, who think of U.S. aid for Israel as a bipartisan affair, seemed relatively unperturbed about short-term effects of an election that left the Republicans in control of the Senate by 53 to 47 seats and of the House of Representatives by some 27 seats, reversing the 20-seat lead formerly held by Democrats.

Not incidentally, the election also reduced the number of Jews in the Senate from 10 to 9 and in the House from 41 to 33. The election also cost the Israel lobby some of its best friends among committee chairmen and members such as Eric Fingerhut (D-OH), Dan Glickman (D-KS), Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (D-PA), Jim Sasser (D-TN) and Harris Wofford (D-PA).

"I believe the support for Israel is broad-based in both major parties of the U.S.," said Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin immediately after the election. For the long-run, however, leaders of both Israeli parties were less sanguine. Speaking later to 3,000 persons attending the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations in Denver, Rabin said the U.S. "will be more conservative and isolationist, less socialistic, less of a welfare state, less [favorable to] foreign aid." Benyamin Netanyahu, leader of the opposition Likud party, said at the same conference that he was "neither happy nor unhappy" with the Republican victory but warned that Israel should be "planning in advance to wean itself" from dependence on U.S. aid.

The Republican legislator friends of Israel worry about most is unpredictable Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), who has become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Because he once had the lowest American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) rating of any senator, AIPAC publicly targeted him for defeat in 1984 and pro-Israel political action committees poured an astonishing $222,342 into the campaign coffers of Helms' opponent, North Carolina Governor James Hunt. Hunt's campaign secretary, using his AIPAC-prepared script, proclaimed: "Senator Helms has the worst anti-Israel record in the United States Senate and supporters of Israel throughout the country know it."

Nevertheless, Helms narrowly won reelection in 1984 and AIPAC prepared for the worst. Instead of savoring his triumph over the opponents he had licked, however, Helms promptly joined them. With a contingent of Jewish constituents, Helms set out for a pilgrimage to Israel. There he had himself photographed wearing a yarmulke and kissing the Western (Wailing) Wall, and upon his return bombarded the media with a series of pro-Israel statements.

Although he is not due for re-election until 1996, Helms' performance as the new chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship showed he already is running hard to capture some Jewish votes. Although he had vowed to slash foreign aid across the board if he became committee chairman, Helms subsequently announced that he would exempt from cuts the more than one-third of total U.S. aid that goes to Israel because such aid is "in the strategic interest of the U.S."

This was doubly ironic because, in the 1984 elections, Helms' defense against charges that he was anti-Israel was that he was against all foreign aid or, in the words of his press secretary at the time, "since entering the U.S. Senate in 1973, Senator Helms has consistently voted against all foreign aid legislation and appropriations, regardless of the beneficiaries." The North Carolina senator's ostentatious 1995 exemption of Israel from his sweeping attacks on foreign aid prove that at least one incumbent Republican senator can flip flop just as agilely as the incumbent Democratic president.

Another Republican who gives lobbyists for Israel special concern is new Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The unease is based upon his fiscal conservatism and his strong support for term limits, a line-item veto, and a balanced budget amendment—all strongly opposed by Israel's U.S. lobby—and his possible support for serious campaign finance reform. Again, however, it appears that for proponents of continued U.S. economic and military aid to Israel there is less to fear from "King Newt" than meets the eye.

In fact, he promptly enrolled in Jesse Helms' campaign, begun when the North Carolina senator miraculously "saw the light" after his near defeat by Lobby-backed Jim Hunt in 1984, to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv—where the Embassies of all other Western powers are situated—to Jerusalem. Even President Bill Clinton, the "pander bear" of the 1992 election campaign, hasn't yet called for that.

Such a move would violate the basic cornerstone of the United Nations charter—barring the acquisition of territory by war—and would pull the rug out from under the current peace process and even the Declaration of Principles signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat at the White House on Sept. 13, 1993. That document calls for negotiating the final status of Jerusalem in the final stage of implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement—meaning starting such negotiations no later than September 1996 and completing them no later than 1998.

For the U.S. to prejudge the outcome by moving its embassy now would set the entire process back to the pre-1993 stage and prompt a number of Muslim countries—perhaps all of them—to break diplomatic relations with the U.S.—costing Americans hundreds of thousands of jobs and tens of billions of dollars in annual trade. It also would provide an enormous shot in the arm to anti-American groups ranging from the Islamist terrorists of Iran and Algeria to the motley mixture of Marxist and Islamic radicals who already are making the cities and airports of Western Europe unsafe, and who would seize upon such an excuse to recruit volunteers to take their violence to the cities of North America.

Mean-spirited Jesse Helms knows this but doesn't care. Since Newt Gingrich seems motivated by ideology and ego rather than mischievousness or malice, however, what is the explanation for his stand on Jerusalem? Unfortunately, it's as simple as the motivation for the questionable book contract with the Rupert Murdock-controlled HarperCollins book publishers that cost him so much politically: money.

Despite his support for school prayer and identification with the Christian Right, the new House speaker is an Israel Lobby favorite, having accepted at least $71,250 from pro-Israel PACs for his election campaigns, including at least $14,500 in the 1994 election cycle. That total, which does not include direct contributions from pro-Israel individuals, is a lot for a House member. In the mind of Gingrich, whose hold on his own district is more tenuous than his hold on the House or his fascination for the national media, having that kind of money to spend on television advertising, and keeping it out of the hands of his opponent, may even have provided the victory margin in his closely contested election victory in 1990.

The 1994 elections also brought Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), a staunch supporter of Israel, into the chairmanship of the House International Relations Committee (formerly the Foreign Affairs Committee), replacing Chairman Lee Hamilton (D-IN), who always voted Israel's way but sometimes allowed testimony embarrassing to Israel to creep into the record of committee hearings.

At the same time, the shift in the position of Sen. Robert Dole (R-KS) from Senate minority to Senate majority leader is a matter of real concern to the Israel lobby. If Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman and one-time Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd is the Democrat the Lobby likes least, his old antagonist Bob Dole qualifies as the Lobby's least-favored Republican. Since Dole already is running hard for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination, however, he is unlikely gratuitously to upset supporters of aid to Israel over the next two years.

Whatever Dole does will not deflect Israel's sympathizers in the U.S. media from pouncing on any missteps by the seasoned Republican campaigner, whose only obvious vulnerability is his age. In a January ABC poll Dole was the favorite 1996 candidate of 41 percent of voters. Far below were the nearest Republican runners-up, former Vice President Dan Quayle at 15 percent and former Representative and HUD Secretary Jack Kemp at 14 percent.

The Lobby considers both Quayle and Kemp FOIs (friends of Israel). For their part, Republican professionals would like to see more evidence that either could defeat Clinton or another Democratic candidate in general elections. By contrast, in a match-up with Clinton on the same ABC poll, Dole scored 43 percent to Clinton's 41. When Dole was matched with Vice President Al Gore, 45 percent of the respondents chose Dole and 40 percent chose Gore.

For the Lobby, besides conservatives Kemp and Quayle, two "moderate" potential Republican candidates, California Governor Pete Wilson and Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, are considered proven FOIs, as are Clinton, Gore and all other potential Democratic candidates.

Getting back to the new congressional committee chairmen, ironically the incumbent Israeli Labor coalition government may have more to worry about from both Helms and Gilman than does Israel's American lobby. Both Republican legislators are advocates of U.S. taxpayer aid to Israel, but neither shows much interest in the compromises Israel's Labor coalition government would have to make to achieve real peace with all of its Arab neighbors.

Helms already has registered strong opposition to the stationing of U.S. troops in the Golan Heights to monitor the demilitarization of the area if Israel withdraws as part of a land-for-peace deal with Syria. Similarly, at a time when Israel's Labor government is seeking to expedite foreign aid to its negotiating partner, Yasser Arafat's Palestinian National Authority, Gilman is calling for a complete investigation of Palestine Liberation Organization finances, overseas businesses and other possible assets before the U.S. provides significant funding to the Palestinians.

Lucille Barnes covers Washington for U.S. and foreign publications.