HAARETZ
August 23, 2004
This month, the major
party least identified with Jewish voters will for the first time open its
national convention in the American city most identified with the
Jews.
The choice of New York City dovetails smoothly with an
unprecedented campaign by the Republican Party to win over traditionally
Democratic Jewish voters.
The timing may be critical. Bush is
running neck-and-neck races in several states with pivotal Jewish
populations. Republicans, buoyed by a January American Jewish Committee
poll that showed the president taking as much as 31 percent of the Jewish
vote, had hoped to double Bush's 19 percent showing in 2000 against Al
Gore, who scored nearly eight out of every 10 votes cast by American
Jews.
But with the clock ticking toward November, the Bush bid to
court American Jews shows signs of having stalled.
A highly
visible recent poll commissioned by the National Jewish Democratic Council
showed 75 percent of U.S. Jews backing John Kerry, with a bare 22 percent
intending to vote for the Republican incumbent.
The effort to land
Jewish votes has been closely watched, meanwhile, by American Muslims, who
are now believed to outnumber Jews in total population, if not in voting
strength.
Of late, the intensive effort to recast the Republican
Party in the eyes of Jewish voters has left the White House open to
charges that it is tailoring its policies to suit the pro-Israel leanings
of U.S. Jews.
The language of the criticism is in some cases bald
enough to recall a brace of controversial attacks on the Bush
administration prior to the Iraq war. At the time there were widespread
allegations, many tinged with what Jews believed was a reincarnated form
of classical anti-Semitism, that Jewish neo-conservatives within the
administration were lobbying for war at Israel's bidding.
As
recently as two months ago, maverick independent candidate Ralph Nader, a
son of Lebanese immigrants, was quoted as stating at a press conference at
the National Press Club: "The days when the chief Israeli puppeteer comes
to the United States and meets with the puppet in the White House and then
proceeds to Capitol Hill, where he meets with hundreds of other puppets,
should be replaced."
Last week, when the U.S. Justice Department
announced indictments against three Arabs suspected of having spent 15
years recruiting for and financing Hamas attacks against Israel, the
accusations returned to the fore.
Thomas Durkin, an attorney for
indicted Washington-area resident Abdelhaleem Hasan Abdelraziq Ashqar, 46,
made little effort to glove his finger-pointing. "This is a blatant
attempt by the Bush-Ashcroft Justice Department to cater to the Jewish
vote," Durkin said.
"It's a foolish attempt to criminalize one side
of an international political issue that no U.S. administration has had
the courage to resolve," Durkin said.
Another of the defendants,
deputy Hamas political bureau head Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, 53, is
believed to be among the handful of Most Wanted at the head of Israel's
hit list of Islamic militant commanders.
Abu Marzouk, who is said
to be in Damascus, was convicted in absentia. He was educated in the
United States, but U.S. authorities seized him in 1995 on suspicion of
having set up and used ostensible charities in the United States in order
to mobilize financial and political support for Hamas. Washington deported
him to Jordan in 1997.
This week, senior Palestinian officials
appeared to skirt presidential politics as they condemned an apparent
shift in the U.S. stance on new settlement construction in the West
Bank.
But if Palestinians decided against citing U.S. politics, at
least one Israeli was willing to do that for them.
Leftist
Meretz-Yahad MK Yossi Sarid declared that the Bush administration was
"mistaken if it believes American Jews support the destructive policies of
the settlers."
Israeli and U.S. officials have signaled in
off-the-record statements that Washington was prepared to abide new
"vertical" construction in West Bank settlements - that is, new housing
built strictly within the confines of existing enclaves.
In gaining
an apparent nod to new construction, Sarid charged, Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon was exploiting the close-fought presidential race to further his
own agenda.
Palestinians had already watched in disbelief and dread
when Bush stood alongside Sharon at the White House and declared it
unrealistic to expect Israel to cede large West Bank settlement blocs in a
future peace deal.
According to Bush, the blocs constituted "new
realities on the ground." He departed further from decades of U.S. policy
by calling the existent settlement blocs major Israeli population centers.
Bush: Good for the settlers?
At best, Sharon could take
but cold comfort in the reports from Washington. As the prime minister
regrouped on a brief working vacation at his Negev ranch, a leader of the
"rebels" in Sharon's Likud said Sunday that the party hardliners' "very
heavy pressure" on Sharon helped influence Washington to shift its stance
over new settlement construction.
The statements appeared to echo
those of some settler activists, who argued that by holding firm and
offering no concessions and no evacuations of West Bank settlements, the
Israeli right had brought Washington aboard at no cost and no
risk.
"The more that we make it difficult for Sharon, the more the
Americans support him, and the more they support the State of Israel,"
said Deputy Minister Michael Ratzon, a principal spokesman and unofficial
"party whip" for the rebels.
Ratzon said the administration was
responding in part to the rebels' recent moves to force key party votes
related to the disengagement plan.
Responding to a New York Times
report on the apparent policy course correction, Ratzon said, "I hear
these things and have to say that our move was the correct one.
"It's clear that they [the Americans] would be more in support of
evacuating settlements, withdrawal, and a return to the 1967 borders. But
seeing that we are applying pressure, and very heavy pressure , they want
to show that they are supporting him, in strengthening settlement blocs,
or in building 'vertically.'"
Flushed with victory, Ratzon
indicated that Israel could leverage its newfound understanding into
further tacit agreements, in particular by turning a blind eye to Israeli
pledges to Bush to uproot illegal outposts.
"There is no one who is
capable of evacuating settlements," Ratzon said, adding that he believes
that Sharon knows this as well.
Using the biblical term for the
West Bank, Ratzon said that Sharon "hasn't even managed to evacuate a tent
or an illegal outpost in Judea and Samaria. So do they really think
they'll succeed in evacuating those settlements?"