November/December 1994, Page 50

Jews and Israel

By Sheldon Richman

Jewish War Veterans Battle Conference of Presidents

The Jewish War Veterans organization believes it has been mistreated by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations because of its harder line on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. David Hymes, the new national commander of the organization, charged the Conference with intentionally limiting the JWV's participation in an observance of the first anniversary of the signing of the accord between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the State of Israel.

According to Forward , a New York Jewish weekly newspaper, Hymes said that in two cities, JWV delegates were excluded from prominent seats during a satellite teleconference with President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Sept. 12. "What really got our goat," said Howard Metzger, one of the delegates allegedly ill-treated, "was that as you looked into the television screens, you couldn't see anyone representing the Jewish War Veterans." Hymes called the snub an "egregious insult" in a letter to Conference chairman Lester Pollack, Forward reported.

The veterans group supports the peace process. But, according to Forward, "it has insisted that Palestinian compliance and a formal repudiation of the Arab boycott serve as mileposts, views it believes the Conference did not want expressed in its 70-city hookup."

The Conference said the matter is a misunderstanding and that the delegates were only excluded from seating reserved for presidents or executives of Conference organizations. Neither of the JWV delegates held such positions. "We've always treated the war veterans with full respect and we will always continue to do so," said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Conference.

Forward, however, speculated that the JWV may be preparing for a fight similar to its recent unsuccessful attempt to keep Americans for Peace Now out of the Conference. "We resent the treatment of our people and what we see as an absolute, deliberate snub," Hymes said. "It's not our policy to threaten, but no insult to our membership will go unanswered."

Liberal, Conservative Groups Split Over Golan Force

The dispute between pro-Israel organizations that support the incumbent Israeli Labor government and those that oppose that government's land-for-peace negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians also erupted in connection with a soon-to-be-released classified study from the RAND Corporation on the risks of an American deployment to the Golan Heights.

Conservative military analyst Frank Gaffney charges that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israeli government's Washington, DC lobby, and the Clinton administration are working to prevent public discussion of the possible deployment, although Congress is being prepared for a hard sell on the mission. Gaffney, director of the Center for Security Policy, says that the administration and AIPAC "don't want to open the debate until they have the issue concluded."

An ad hoc group of conservative organizations has formed to oppose a U.S. deployment to the Golan Heights.

AIPAC president Steven Grossman said, "We have maintained from the beginning that until any context and content of an agreement with Syria is reached...any discussion about [a U.S. deployment] is premature. Without that specificity or a plan in place, how can you deal with the many variables involved?"

Gaffney and others say they fear that the mission will be presented to Congress as part of an Israel-Syria accord and thus will be seen as a fait accompli. This worries him and others who dislike the idea of Israeli security being dependent on an external and uncertain factor, such as an American force that later could be removed for political reasons. Gaffney said it is disingenuous for AIPAC to say that it is not already at work on the Golan mission. "This does nothing but discredit a reputable and needed organization and raises questions about the reliability of its word in the future."

The Jewish weekly Forward reported that an ad hoc group of conservative Jewish, Christian and security organizations, calling themselves the Coalition for a Secure U.S.-Israel Friendship, has formed to oppose a U.S. deployment to the Golan Heights. One member of the coalition is the Jewish War Veterans of U.S.A., which passed a resolution opposing the deployment at its convention in September. (See also "Congress Watch," on page 33 of this issue.)

Opposition Arises to National ID Card

An alliance of civil libertarians, and Hispanic, Asian and Jewish leaders is emerging to oppose any proposal for a national identity card from the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. The commission was to present its reform recommendations to Congress on Sept. 30. The informal alliance feared that the bipartisan commission would propose a computerized registration system for citizens and legal immigrants as a way to combat illegal immigration. The system would enable employers to verify that job applicants were in the country legally. According to Forward, Jewish groups are concerned that such a registry will be similar to an internal passport system, complete with identity card. The idea summons memories of past Jewish persecution in other nations. Creation of a national identity card is an idea that has floated around Washington for years. Every mention of it elicits opposition from civil libertarians and others concerned with the potential for persecution and privacy violations.

Sammie Moshenberg, director of Washington operations for the National Council of Jewish Women, said that "the first step toward restricting the rights of any one group from the Nuremberg Laws of the Third Reich to the apartheid laws of South Africa has always been to single out and identify individuals as members of that one group. Obviously, this isn't going to lead to concentration camps or anything that Draconian here in America, but whenever you have any sort of centralized identification system, you have an issue that speaks directly to us as a people."

It was not certain that a national identity card would be part of the commission's proposal. Susan Martin, its executive director, said that even if legal residents were issued photo Social Security cards, they would not be required to carry them. But that does not comfort the opponents, which include the American Civil Liberties Union and the Cato Institute, in addition to the Organization of Chinese Americans, the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic group, and the National Council of Jewish Women.

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