April 1990, Page 44

Jews and Israel

By Andrea Barron

Jewish Publication Lashes Out at Presidents' Conference

The American Jewish Committee's bimonthly magazine Present Tense has published an article accusing the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations of trying to create "the false impression of a unified American Jewish front that today supports every facet of Israel's hard-line policy, despite reliable polls showing that the majority of American Jews either are unsure about that policy or disagree."

Robert Spero wrote in the magazine's January /February edition that an increasing number of US Jews are "fed up" with the Presidents' Conference, an umbrella group made up of nearly 50 national Jewish organizations. Since the 1967 Six-Day War, Spero said, these organizations have "fixated" on the "heady world of Israel's 'security'...as if their members shouldered Uzi submachine guns to their meetings."

Spero cited a poll conducted by the American Jewish Committee where 63 percent of the Jews polled said American Jews should be able to criticize Israel publicly. But while the Jewish community has started openly to challenge Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, the Presidents' Conference has been moving rightward. This trend started in 1986, when Morris Abram became chairman of the umbrella group. (Abram is now the United States Ambassador to the United Nations' European Office.)

Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, professor of religion at Dartmouth College and a leading dove, explains why. If a leader from the Presidents' Conference takes issue with an Israeli prime minister, says Hertzberg, "He will be treated coolly in Jerusalem. He will not be able to return home to tell his board of trustees of his intimate conversation with the prime minister in Jerusalem, or carry messages of supposed importance between Jerusalem and Washington."

Shortly after the latest edition of Present Tense appeared, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) decided to cease publication of the magazine. AJC president Sholom Comay said this was part of a major restructuring of the organization, calling it a budgetary matter which had nothing to do with politics. (AJC has a $1 million yearly deficit and Present Tense has been losing from $85,000 to $150,000 a year.) AJC will continue to publish Commentary, the conservative intellectual magazine edited by Norman Podhoretz. Comay said Commentary was able to raise its own money to continue operations while Present Tense was not.

Community Relations Councils Call for Settlements Moratorium

Concerned about the negative impact that settling Soviet Jews in the West Bank and Gaza Strip could have on aliyah (immigration to Israel), fundraising for Soviet Jews and Jewish-Arab relations, the annual plenary meeting of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC) voted 216 to 207 for a resolution urging a moratorium on the construction of Jewish settlements in the territories.

The resolution adopted by the annual plenary of NJCRAC, an umbrella group of over 100 grassroots community relations councils and 13 national organizations, said that new housing construction in the West Bank and Gaza "may detract from the aliyah potential and our fundraising" and also "increase tensions between Israelis and Palestinians living there, possibly disrupting delicate negotiations." Jewish fundraising organizations in the US are committed to raise $420 million to help Israel absorb the approximately one million Soviet Jews expected to arrive there over the next several years.

The NJCRAC resolution is being viewed as a response to a statement made by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir last January, when he said the enormous influx of Soviet Jews into Israel would require a "big Israel," clearly a rationalization for keeping the West Bank and Gaza. The US government reacted to Shamir's statement by announcing that Israel's request for $400 million in additional foreign aid to facilitate settlement in Israel of Soviet Jews would be tied to a promise to halt new settlements. And under pressure from Arab states, the Soviet Union decided to delay the implementation of direct flights between Moscow and Jerusalem, which would facilitate the movement of Soviet Jews to Israel. Soviet Jews must now pass through Bucharest, Budapest or Vienna in order to reach Israel.

The campaign to pass the NJCRAC resolution was led by the liberal American Jewish Congress and the Reform Union of American Hebrew Congregations and supported by the American Jewish Committee and the National Council of Jewish Women. Theodore Mann, immediate past president of the American Jewish Congress, told the Washington Jewish Week that NJCRAC delegates were "heartbroken" that because of the settlement question, "thousands and thousands of Jews who might have come via direct flights may not get to Israel nearly as soon."

But Seymour Reich, the current chair of the Presidents' Conference, called the resolution "inappropriate" and "mischievous" and said its supporters were using the Soviet emigration issue to demonstrate their opposition to settlements. A statement by the UAHC's Rabbi David Saperstein did seem to demonstrate that some NJRAC delegates were disturbed about Israel subsidizing settlements in the occupied territories. Saperstein said the NJCRAC would show Shamir there are American Jews who reject his contention that Israel kept its side of any land-for-peace bargain by handing over the Sinai to Egypt 10 years ago.

The American Jewish Congress not only supported the settlement moratorium resolution-it also sponsored two amendments saying that many members of the Jewish community favor the "two state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that Shamir should be criticized for placing obstacles in the way of the peace process. AJC decided to withdraw these amendments after the plenary passed the resolution urging a freeze on settlements.

Andrea Barron, a Ph.D. candidate in international relations at the American University in Washington, DC, is a member of the Jewish Committee for Israeli-Palestinian Peace.