Israel Seeking to Cultivate George W. Bush and Other Republican Presidential Hopefuls

By Tim Kennedy

Hoping to avert a troubled relationship with yet another Bush in the White House, Israeli government officials are seeking to cultivate closer ties with George W. Bush—the Republican governor from Texas and son of former U.S. President George Bush—who is now seen as a strong contender for the year 2000 presidential race.

The Washington Report has learned that Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Dore Gold, met privately with Governor Bush during a June visit to the Lone Star State and invited Bush to come to Israel on a “fact finding” mission. Several powerful Republicans active in U.S.-based Israel advocacy organizations are also getting behind the effort to bring George W. Bush to Israel.

Simultaneously, the Republican Party sees disenchantment among Jewish voters with President Bill Clinton’s handling of Israel and the peace process, and hopes to lure these voters into the Republican political camp.

Tel Aviv political leaders hope the effort to establish close ties with George W. Bush will ensure Israel’s relationship with the younger Bush is less troubled than that with his father.

For example, President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir clashed bitterly over Washington’s efforts to talk officially with Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). And Bush briefly withheld U.S. financial support to Israel over Shamir’s refusal to suspend construction of settlements in Israeli-occupied territory.

Israeli foreign policy watchers believe that even if George W. Bush ends up relying heavily upon the counsel of James Baker, his father’s secretary of state, the degree to which political realities have changed will work in Israel’s favor.

Gold’s meeting with Governor Bush is welcome news to many conservative foreign policy analysts: “This is Mr. Bush’s bar mitzvah,” Heritage Foundation director of congressional relations Marshall Wittmann told Forward, a New York Jewish weekly. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative, Washington-based political “think tank.” “What’s significant is he’s building his portfolio for the Jewish community,” Wittmann explained.

“The bloodlines don’t indicate that Mr. Bush will be pro-Israel.”

However, the deputy executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Stephen Silberfarb, warned Jews against getting too excited about Israel’s apparently positive contacts with George W. Bush. “I think with the return of the Bush demons, you never know where it’s going to start or stop,” Silberfarb says. “The bloodlines don’t indicate that Mr. Bush will be pro-Israel. [His father] George Herbert Walker Bush certainly is not considered one of the more pro-Israel presidents.”

For his part, Ambassador Gold described the meeting with Bush as one of many ongoing briefings he gives to American state officials. Gold, who has already met with the governors of New York, Connecticut and other states, talked with George W. Bush about Palestinian compliance with the Hebron Agreement, and displayed maps showing evidence of what Gold describes as “threats to Israel.”

“It was a very friendly, warm meeting.” Gold said. “He was very open and receptive to what I had to say.”

A spokesman for Governor Bush, Shirley Green, called the meeting “basically a courtesy call,” during which Gold “verbally asked the governor, as most ambassadors usually do, if he could visit [Israel].”

Green said Israel shouldn’t expect Governor Bush to come any time soon. “He always responds to such inquiries by saying at this time he is running hard for re-election and has no plans to travel abroad,” Green said.

Executive director Matt Brooks of the National Jewish Coalition, a Republican group, said he hopes George W. Bush accepts Gold’s invitation. “We are in touch with all of the different candidates and people who are thinking about running for president,” Brooks said. “As we do with all of the leaders in the party, we think anybody in a position of prominence should visit Israel.”

Wittmann told Forward that George W. Bush will do a better job with Jews than his father. “He has the kind of charisma that he’ll succeed in wooing most people,” Wittmann said. He acknowledged, however, that, as governor of Texas, the younger Bush has rarely been called upon to comment on foreign policy issues.

Foreign Policy Rabbis

“We don’t know who his foreign policy rabbis will be,” Wittmann said. “Should he run, however, I suspect he will surround himself with people who share his visions and goals, not necessarily his father’s. Once we know that, that will be a clear indication of what direction he’s going in.”

Republicans believe they now have an “historic opportunity” to convince Jewish Americans to abandon their traditional allegiance to the Democrat Party. Some 80 percent of Jews in the 1996 election supported Clinton, and even during the height of President Ronald Reagan’s political popularity, Jewish voters remained loyally Democratic.

The Republican Party first saw its opportunity to lure away the Jewish vote last spring when President Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary, alienated many American Jews with her call for a Palestinian state, and when the Clinton administration began to pressure Israel to abide by the terms of the bilateral Oslo accords.

Frank Luntz, the Republican political strategist who helped Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) craft the ill-fated “Contract With America,” is spearheading the recruitment effort. Last May, Luntz convened focus groups to help the Republican Party find language that would help its candidates attract more Jewish voters in the November congressional election and in the year 2000 presidential vote. The key, Luntz advised, is to be “vocally and unconditionally pro-Israel.”

The Republican recruiting effort is receiving an added boost from remarks made by Israel’s minister of industry and trade, Natan Sharansky, who accuses the Clinton administration of neglecting the interests of Israel.

“It is precisely because of the large number of Jews in the U.S. administration—there are more of them now than in any previous U.S. administration—that it is hard for the president to truly understand the trends in the Jewish community,” Sharansky told Vesti, a Hebrew-language newspaper published in Tel Aviv. “Why? Because many of these presidential Jews belong to the American branch of Peace Now.”

The assistant executive director of Americans for Peace Now, Lewis Roth, denounced the Republican plan—as did the chairman emeritus of the Israel Policy Forum, Robert Lifton. “If the Republicans are trying to use as a wedge issue what happens to be the same position of the majority of Jewish voters, I don’t see how that has any traction,” Roth said.

With regard to Sharansky’s statements, Roth said that to the extent that “President Clinton is listening to advisers who share the opinion of Americans for Peace Now, he’s getting an accurate portrayal of what American Jews think.”

Officials at Peace Now, a Tel Aviv-based political organization that advocates dialogue with Israel’s enemies, identify Clinton’s national security adviser, Samuel “Sandy” Berger, as a former donor to Americans for Peace Now. And a friend of the Clintons who was a Democratic National Committee official, Sara Ehrman, is an Americans for Peace Now board member.

However, Sharansky’s words are welcomed by Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America. “It is true that since Clinton became president among his most prominent Jewish advisers have been APN board members or advisers who do not represent the mainstream of American Jewry,” Klein said.

But the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, warns against politicizing support for Israel. Says Foxman: “I hope and pray that support for Israel does not become a political football, partisan in nature.”

Tim Kennedy is a foreign policy and defense analyst based in Washington, DC.