U.S. Jewish Weeklies Cautiously Assess Monicagate’s Effect On Israel

By Richard H. Curtiss

“Some supporters of Netanyahu were referring to Lewinsky as a modern-day Queen Esther—a beautiful young Jewish woman who, through her sexual appeal to the nation’s leader, helped save her people. More than a bit far-fetched, of course, but the description was reflective of the feeling among some Israelis that the sex scandal involving Clinton has taken Netanyahu off the hot seat in terms of complying with U.S. requests for withdrawing from additional West Bank land. There was also speculation in Israel that Clinton may resign, elevating Al Gore to the presidency. Gore is considered even more supportive of Israel than Clinton.” —Editorial, The Jewish Week , New York, Jan. 30, 1998.

The fact that a young Jewish woman may be instrumental in bringing down Bill Clinton, who has been described as “the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history” by the Jewish weeklies that link Jewish readers across the United States, escapes no one in the U.S. Jewish community. And the realization that 24-year-old Monica Lewinsky, and her publicity-seeking lawyer, William Ginsburg, may still determine by their actions whether Clinton goes or stays preoccupies thoughtful Israelis as well.

For example, when Tzadok Yehezkeli, New York correspondent of Israel’s largest daily, Yediot Ahronot , asked for an interview Ginsburg responded, “You’re a Jew. I’m a Jew, so why not?”

Then when the Israeli asked him if Lewinsky wanted Clinton to step down as a result of her accounts of a sexual relationship with the U.S. president, Ginsburg replied: “On the contrary. We are fans of President Clinton and admire his position and policies concerning Israel. Clinton is very positive toward Israel and the Jews, and Monica and I are Jews.”

According to the Israeli correspondent Ginsburg elaborated further on his own feelings, saying, “I am torn because I fear for the fate of the presidency in our democracy, and I don’t want the president to resign. Who knows who will come after Clinton and how he will deal with Israel?”

In a separate interview with The Jewish Week of New York, Ginsburg noted: “This is a major issue for our country and the free world. This situation erodes [Clinton’s] credibility. It takes his ability to mediate the problems such as Iraq and the Palestinian and Israeli problems, and it distracts from his credibility and his authority.”

But that is not how American supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu feel about the scandal that halted what might have been a full-fledged confrontation between the U.S. president who presided over the signing of the Oslo accords, and the Israeli prime minister who was elected on a pledge to destroy them.

Irv Rubin, chairman of the militant Jewish Defense League, now headquartered in Los Angeles, told the Mobile Register in Alabama, “I find it fulfilling that a Jewish woman is going to be the one to bring him [Clinton] down. She is an assimilated Jew, not a religious Jew, but [that] does not matter because she is a Jew and I find that very satisfying.”

Most comments in the Jewish weekly press fell somewhere between Rubin’s gloating that an American president who has openly criticized Israel’s right-wing prime minister has been so diminished politically, and lawyer Ginsburg’s seemingly sincere regret that he and his client, both of whom he said had visited Israel “many times,” probably will be the undoing of a president who has been “positive toward Israel and the Jews.”

Wrote James Besser, Washington correspondent of The Jewish Week of New York: “With a Clinton administration consumed by the scandal, a radically transformed political landscape will likely have an enormous impact on both the domestic and foreign policy agendas of a range of Jewish groups...The swirling controversy could limit the administration’s options in dealing with Iraq’s Saddam Hussain, undercut efforts to maintain international coalitions on Iran and Iraq, and wreak havoc on the Middle East peace talks.”

Besser also quoted an unnamed “official with a Jewish group that supports the peace process” as saying that “both Arafat and Netanyahu have shown a strong tendency to ignore their commitments unless their feet are held to the fire by Washington. That means pressure on both sides, which the Clinton administration seemed willing to employ with considerable subtlety last week. But this week the political factors have all changed, and it may be less likely that the administration will risk angering key constituencies by playing a forceful role.”

Wrote Matthew Dorf of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an article printed in the Jan. 29 Washington Jewish Week : “The sex scandal that has rocked the White House and the increasing probability of an American military strike against Iraq have raised questions about the administration’s ability to sustain a high-level diplomatic initiative...For Israel the key question is whether the pressure is off, as many seem to believe, or whether the administration will continue to press Netanyahu to accept a proposal with which he feels less than comfortable. Clinton friends say that given his embattled presidency, he is likely to work even harder on the issues of the day but may not have the political capital to pressure Netanyahu in particular to accept the U.S. plan.”

Both the U.S. Jewish weeklies and the Israeli press, in the guise of ridiculing them, have printed some comments from Arab newspapers citing the seemingly all-Jewish cast of characters in what is increasingly being called “Monicagate,” winning out over “zippergate,” initially used by U.S. journalists, and “naughty gate” used by the British.

Israel’s daily Ha’aretz reported that “among Palestinians, many people believe that because Monica Lewinsky is Jewish [the scandal] is nothing but another stunt by the Israeli Mossad...In East Jerusalem on Saturday you could hear perfectly serious people saying the timing of the new scandal could not possibly be a coincidence.”

The Israeli press, however, is quietly suggesting some of the same things. A columnist for Yediot Ahronot mused: “We innocently thought the fate of the peace process was in the hands of a Jewish woman... Madeleine Albright. Apparently, the fate of the peace process is, to a lesser extent, in the hands of another Jewish woman, Monica Lewinsky...who spent a fun-filled summer three years ago at the White House.”

Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Stephen Rosenfeld also used the device of quoting the Palestinian press, in a denigrating way, to introduce some of the same sensational charges into the mainstream U.S. press. He wrote in the Jan. 30 Washington Post : “The Palestinian newspaper Al Hayat Al Jadida wrote this week that ‘the Jewish clique’ had determined to use his encounter with ‘a plump, corpulent Jewish girl’ to teach Clinton a lesson in ‘slavish loyalty,’ and that his chosen escape involves ‘attacking Iraq under the pretext of ‘doing away with a dictatorial regime.’ This accusation is an extreme, false and obnoxious version of a suspicion shared or at least entertained elsewhere, not least in Washington.”

British journalist and Middle East specialist Robert Fisk took a middle road by not addressing the cause but succinctly summing up the effects of Monicagate: “The U.S. president—who never did more than complain privately to Israel about its wish to destroy the Oslo agreement—no longer has the slightest leverage over the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. And a war between Israelis and Palestinians, ever more likely given the threats they are making against each other, will cost many more lives than Mr. Clinton’s pinprick missiles against Iraq.”

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report .