Haaretz
The annual conference of the powerful pro-Israel
AIPAC lobby in June disproved the conspiracy theory that claimed the
Jews persuaded President Bush to conquer Iraq. According to the same
theory, the lobby is now pressing him not to present the road map to put
an end to the Israeli occupation of the territories.
On the first
day of the AIPAC convention, a man named Gary Bauer took the podium. He
reminded the cheering thousands that God gave the Land of Israel to the
Jewish people and, therefore, there is an absolute ban on giving it to
another people. Bauer is not a member of the National Religious Party, nor
of the Likud central committee. He's not even Jewish. He is a leading
preacher from the Christian right in America, one of those who believe the
Jews are The Chosen People and one day will even choose the right messiah.
Bauer is a leading spokesman for arch-conservative policies, including a
total ban on all abortions and favoring government funding for religious
schools.
These are the people generating the spiritual energy
fueling George Bush's war on global terrorism. Evangelist Christians from
South Carolina paid for the huge billboard on the Ayalon Highway declaring
"There's no land for peace." TV evangelist Pat Robertson last week
reprimanded Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, saying "Who do you think you
are, handing Jerusalem over to Arafat?"
With Christian friends like
these close to the president's ear, the right-wing government in Israel
does not need Jewish friends to rebuff political initiatives like the road
map. But the Jewish activists are not giving up. The religious sources of
the values that drive the Christian right are not preventing some Jewish
organizations from turning them into a natural ally. Among those
organizations are some that only a decade ago were thriving by exposing
the anti-Semitic sloganeering in the sermons of some of their newfound
friends.
This coming Passover, those Jews will devotedly recite
"Next year in Jerusalem rebuilt," and a few might even do so from one of
the hotels in the capital, which have been empty for the last two years.
Those same activists joining the crusade against renewal of the political
negotiations and against a settlement freeze know what a bloody price
Israel is paying for the conflict in the territories. They are familiar
with the ominous economic data threatening the social stability of their
beloved country. They all understand that by the end of this decade, the
Jews will become a minority between the Jordan and
Mediterranean.
So what drives these Jewish professionals? A new
poll for one of the Jewish organizations shows that their policy does not
represent the Jewish street in America. According to this poll, 63 percent
of American Jewry supports active involvement by the U.S. administration
in the peace process. This could confirm the assessment of one senior
Israeli diplomat, who noted that the name Jay Fielder, a young Jewish
football player, is much better known to American Jews than that of
Malcolm Hoenlein, the eternal executive vice-chairman of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
It is not
because, as in Israel, the majority supports left-wing concessions but
allows the political leadership to lead right-wing policies. The big
difference between the two communities remains that Israeli Jews get blown
up in buses, their sons have to guard settlers and their grandchildren can
expect to grow up in a binational state or an apartheid regime. If it is
difficult for those American Jewish busybodies to push the president and
Congress into the cold water of the peace process, presumably one could
expect they not try to force the administration to go in the opposite
direction. They even have the right to draw fire to the Jews over the Iraq
war, but they do not have the right to block even the slightest chance for
peace here.