Israel Lobby Wary of Republican Hopefuls

By Lucille Barnes

As Republican presidential hopefuls start the quadrennial ritual of handshaking in New Hampshire, deal-making in Iowa, and fund-raising in their home states plus New York, Los Angeles and other financial centers, the friends of Israel are listening carefully. If would-be candidates say the U.S. Embassy should be moved now to Jerusalem, they've passed the test. If, instead, they say something about letting the parties to the Middle East peace process complete the pending negotiations on Jerusalem's status before the U.S. takes any action about moving its embassy or, heaven forbid, refer to U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 and land-for-peace, they've made themselves fair game for media dirty tricks, starting right now.

The nightmare vision pro-Israel lobbyists seek to avoid is finding themselves facing an unfriendly U.S. president after the 1996 elections. Such a president, armed with a line-item veto, could undo with a few strokes of the pen all the years of successful work—and spending—that have gone into building up secure majorities for unlimited U.S. taxpayer aid to Israel in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The nightmare has become virtual reality four times since the establishment of the state of Israel. The first time was in 1956, when an unbeatable Dwight D. Eisenhower broke up the invasion of Egypt by Israeli forces, backed by France and Britain, and forced Israel to withdraw from the Sinai by threatening to cut off the tax exemption for private donations to Israel. At that time, however, Israel was strongly backed by France, which provided it the weapons the U.S. would not, and Israel had not yet become hooked on U.S. government aid.

The second time was when Richard Nixon, upon being re-elected for a second term, made it clear that, having armed Israel to the teeth during his first term, he expected it to stop finding "security reasons" for not complying with U.N. Security Council Resolution 242's land-for-peace formula. The Watergate scandal ended that threat.

The third time was when Jimmy Carter seemed ready, if re-elected, to force Menachem Begin to comply with his Camp David promise to halt West Bank settlements. Carter, savaged in the press and crippled by the third-party candidacy of John Anderson, was not re-elected.

The fourth time was in September 1991 when George Bush "went public" with his threat to link U.S. loan guarantees to Israeli cooperation with the U.S.-initiated "peace process." The threat, supported by 86 percent of the American people at the time, brought down the hard-line Likud government of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. His successor, Yitzhak Rabin, promised in June 1992 to "freeze" settlement activity and got the loan guarantees.

Later that year, however, Bush, savaged in the press and crippled by the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot, lost his re-election bid. Rabin subsequently has resumed settlement building at an even faster rate than that of Shamir. Under the administration of President Bill Clinton, however, U.S. economic and military aid to Israel has reached an all-time high.

Now, a year and a half before the 1996 U.S. presidential elections, the Israel lobby seemingly has no problems. Nevertheless, Israel's American friends are worried for two reasons. Clinton seems extremely vulnerable. Whether or not the looming Whitewater scandal comes to a head in time to prevent his renomination, a strong Republican candidate almost certainly could beat him, or any other Democratic candidate in 1996.

The second worry concerns four items in Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America." Lobbyists for Israel oppose term limits, significant campaign finance reforms and a balanced budget amendment. Most of all, however, they fear the line-item veto. It should enable any U.S. president with a few strokes of the pen to cut taxpayer funds for Israel, no matter how cleverly they are scattered and imbedded within the U.S. government budget. This power to force Israel to make the necessary territorial concessions for Middle East peace, as Eisenhower did, and Nixon, Carter and Bush all would have done if they could have, would be a deadly weapon in the hands of any president not beholden to Israel.

Therefore, in addition to efforts to strike those four items out of legislation resulting from the "Contract With America," friends of Israel are working frantically to see that no "unfriendly" candidate is nominated by either party. In the case of the Democrats there is no problem. Even if circumstances force Clinton to step aside, there will be no break with the administration's Israel-centered Middle East policy.

Vice President Al Gore made his peace with the Israel lobby long ago. Many felt his too-obvious pandering for the Jewish vote in the New York primary election in 1988 helped him lose the Democratic nomination to Michael Dukakis, a proven but less obvious friend of Israel.

It is, therefore, solely with the Republican candidates that friends of Israel are concerned. The first three candidates to drop out all were proven friends of Israel—William Bennett, Jack Kemp, and Dan Quayle. It was no coincidence. According to polls, none had even a third of the support of Senator Bob Dole. Therefore the big pro-Israel donors held back because they hoped California Governor Pete Wilson would enter the race. Though Wilson hasn't made the ritual obeisance to Israel in 1995, they assume it's because he hasn't yet formally become a candidate.

He's been a trusted friend of Israel ever since 1984, when he still was mayor of San Diego. That year, in a California primary battle for the Republican senatorial nomination with former Congressman Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey, who had introduced a bill in Congress to deduct from aid to Israel a dollar for every dollar Israel spent on West Bank settlements, Wilson based his campaign fund-raising strategy on depicting McCloskey as an existential threat to Israel. Wilson raised money not only among friends of Israel in Hollywood, but also through nationwide solicitations mailed to subscribers to such extremely pro-Israel magazines as Commentary and the New Republic .

Wilson won the primary and then won the Senate seat, which he later relinquished to run successfully for California governor. In Wilson the pro-Israel donors sense a likely winner. To the voters he seems totally mainstream and in tune with 1990s concerns, but lobbyists for Israel remember he made his peace with them long ago.

It is extremely unlikely that Wilson, the lobby's anointed candidate for 1996, will decide not to enter the race, as happened in the 1992 race when the lobby favorite, New York Governor Mario Cuomo, suddenly withdrew his name from consideration. Should that happen, however, look for Jack Kemp, and possibly Bennett or Quayle, to jump right back into the race.

Two Republican candidates who have made ritual obeisance to the Israel lobby remain in the race. One is Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Although he is Jewish, moderate and a life-long supporter of Israel, he has high negatives and friends of Israel don't take him seriously except as a possible vice presidential selection by a conservative candidate seeking to balance the ticket.

The other candidate is Phil Gramm, who has called for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem without waiting for conclusion of the final status negotiations as called for in the Yitzhak Rabin-Yasser Arafat agreement. So far it hasn't produced much pro-Israel funding outside his home state of Texas, primarily because friends of Israel don't see him as a winner, are put off by his doctrinaire conservatism, and distrust him both because of his negative attitude toward foreign aid and because he has demonstrated that he can raise large amounts of money without them.

The lobby has far greater doubts about two other Republicans who have called for moving the Embassy to Jerusalem even before entering the race. They are House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms. Most American Jews loathe Helms for his hypocrisy. He is demonstrating it all over again in 1995 by proclaiming his opposition to all foreign aid while seeking to preserve aid to Israel at the present level by burying it elsewhere in the Pentagon and State Department budgets. The distrust of Gingrich is almost as intense and is based upon the obvious cognitive dissonance between his insistence that he wants to preserve aid for Israel while his "Contract With America" is dedicated to clearing away all the congressional gimmickry that has built that aid up to its present astonishing level.

Of greatest concern to the Israel lobby, however, are the Republicans who haven't yet taken the pledge. Least likely to is Senator Bob Dole who, during 40 years in Congress, somehow has avoided thoroughly prostituting himself to the Israel lobby. This is partly because it is not required for re-election in his home state of Kansas, and partly because he is quicker and smarter than the other senators, which is why they have selected him as Senate majority leader.

Political writer Douglas Bloomfield, a former American Israel Public Affairs Committee official, wrote in the Washington Jewish Week last October that Dole was "never much of a friend of Israel" who, "now that he is contemplating another run for the White House...is in one of his make-nice-to-the-Jews phases, but it won't last."

For Israel's influential friends in the mainstream media, it has been open season on Dole for a long time. Thus the constant references to his age, although his performances at press conferences and on talk shows demonstrate repeatedly that at 71 he is brighter, wiser and wittier than most other Washington politicians ever can aspire to be. After failing by one vote to get a 67-vote margin for the balanced budget amendment, although at the time of the vote there were only 53 Republicans in the Senate, Israel's friends in the media tried to turn the defeat into a "setback" for Dole's presidential ambitions.

He also is being assailed for, in the words of The New York Times , lacking "the vision thing," a ploy that was used so frequently against Bush that it already has become a cliché, and for a tendency toward "isolationism." Since he is for a more active policy in Bosnia than most of the Democrats, it is clear that in the jargon of the Israel lobby, "isolationism" means lack of support for unconditional aid to Israel.

Lobbyists for Israel also were concerned for a time about a possible candidacy by former Secretary of State James Baker, who was Bush's chosen instrument in trying to link U.S. aid to Israel to Israeli performance at the peace table. With Baker not demonstrating much stomach for the endless speech-making and schmoozing required to raise campaign funds, the lobby judges that the Baker threat has receded except, possibly, as a vice-presidential candidate.

Another Republican candidate who has not paid full homage to Israel is Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander. As the special prosecutor increasingly focuses on the sleeze surrounding Bill Clinton's days as governor of Arkansas, however, public attention inevitably will be drawn to the Alexander record as governor of Tennessee. The media won't find the titillating bimbos and dead bodies that seem to follow investigations into petty corruption and influence peddling in Little Rock. It will find, however, that in Nashville influence peddling is carried out efficiently and on a grand scale. Lamar Alexander, who was born with neither a silver spoon nor a silver foot in his mouth, has become a very wealthy man while holding a series of low-salaried academic and political positions.

If that means he might be an easy candidate to seduce on Israel's behalf, it also means he will have a hard time winning a national election. As Americans look more closely at his bank account and how it grew, they may conclude that putting this "outsider" in charge in Washington is analogous to putting the proverbial fox in charge of the chicken coop.

A new candidate who, like Dole, makes the Israel lobby nervous and irritable is Sen. Richard Lugar, formerly the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, and now chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. As plain-spoken, Midwestern and mainstream as Dole, Lugar was dismissed in October by writer Bloomfield as "even-handed" in Middle East policy. This is a pejorative term in the weekly Jewish press for which Bloomfield writes.

The final candidate being eyed by the Israel lobby just as curiously as by the public as a whole is General Colin Powell. His strength is the fact that, as a man of demonstrated military and political competence but of no known opinions, he has no enemies. As an African American, he might pull much of the African-American vote, 13 percent in the country as a whole—but concentrated in California, New York and other key electoral states—away from the Democrats, who have taken it for granted too obviously and for too long. Depending upon whether he can avoid making enemies as he starts to take positions, he might also pull with him a huge number of middle-of-the-road Americans who would feel good about voting for an African American as president (or vice president), thus validating the tarnished but still cherished American ideals of social mobility and an open society, that voters could overlook some fuzziness in his stands about other issues they consider important.

To the Israel lobby, the general represents both peril and promise. It would be extremely difficult for him to make obeisance to Israel and hold an African-American base. So, since he probably won't make the ritual offering, he cannot expect much early big-money support from friends of Israel as either a Republican or a Democratic party candidate.

On the other hand, should Dole or Luger capture the Republican nomination, and Clinton or any other Democratic presidential candidate remain as vulnerable as the Democrats seem today, look for many of those same friends of Israel to encourage Powell, or some other come-from-behind candidate, to run as an independent while the media savages the Republican nominee.

The potent combination of one-sided media attacks and a third party candidate drawing away support from the ostensible front runner worked to unseat Jimmy Carter and George Bush. If Dole captures the Republican nomination, the lobby may have no choice but to try it again.

Lucille Barnes covers Washington politics for U.S. and foreign media.