Haaretz Correspondent
September 8, 2004
The dread felt by Israeli and American Jewish
officials was as rooted as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as fresh as the
headline that they feared could break any minute.
Could Israel have used
its client American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying group as a conduit
to receive classified information from a Pentagon analyst or the National
Security Agency?
Such was the implication of a flurry of media reports
which emerged last month.
Stated differently, could an Israeli agency
have been so unwise as to have, in a single stroke, risked blunting the efficacy
of AIPAC, casting American Jews in the shadow of accusations of dual loyalty and
undue influence on U.S. policymaking, and endangering the Jewish state's only
indispensable alliance, its lifeblood tie to Washington.
Israel says no.
AIPAC says the same.
And although from the start the reports have offered
much smoke and little actual fire, the case surrounding Pentagon analyst
Lawrence Franklin presented Israel and AIPAC with the diplomatic equivalent of
an unexploded cluster bomb.
Even as the case recedes from the
headlines, it could do significant harm to Israel in a large number of ways ?
whether the allegations are true or not.
1. Conspiracy Theory and
anti-Semitism
"Even if the present affair pales, shrinks and fades
away, it can supply fuel to the conspiracy theory, one that is widespread in
certain sectors of the American media," said political scientist Avi Ben-Zvi,
citing maverick Republican rightist Pat Buchanan and other strident right and
left-wing critics of Israeli influence on American
policymaking.
According to the theory, Ben-Zvi said, Jews in key
positions in the administration, among them suspect analyst Franklin's
neo-conservative - and Jewish - superiors, Deputy Defense Minister Paul
Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, a senior aide to Donald Rumsfeld on Iran and Iraq
policy, represent "an enthusiastically pro-Israeli group diverting American
policy to a direction which serves non-American goals - manipulating and
directing policy."
"It sounds almost like the Protocols of the Elders
of Zion," Ben-Zvi said.
The post-Saddam quagmire in Iraq has only
intensified the sensitivity of the issue, as some leftists have argued that only
Israel has benefited from a war which a "cabal" of Jewish neo-conservatives
drove into being.
2. Closing off sources of shared
intelligence
Well-placed former members of the Israeli intelligence
community have said that there are as many as thousands of contacts a year
between American and Israeli figures, colleagues in a number of fields, in which
non-classified but potentially valuable information is exchanged.
In the
wake of the Franklin case, American officials, it is feared, will now shy away
from contacts with Israelis, long a key source of
information-sharing.
Moreover, the allegations tying Franklin, AIPAC, and
Israel come at a time of strained relations between the Central Intelligence
Agency and the Mossad, a tension that may have scaled down CIA cooperation with
Israel of late.
The sharing of information is vital to both sides, as the
United States has long received from Israel clues gleaned from the Middle East,
while the Jewish state has relied on American sources for early warnings of
potential attacks on Israel or Israeli or Jewish-linked interests
abroad.
3. Undermining AIPAC
Of all the weapons in
Israel's policy arsenal, few have been more consistently potent and reliable
than the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
"Apart from our
direct military strength, our relations with the United States, in which AIPAC
plays a very strong part, are our second-ranking strategic asset," said former
Israeli ambassador to Washington Itamar Rabinovich.
It has been suggested
that a key source of AIPAC's strength is its widespread image of unparalleled
clout in affecting foreign policy regarding Israel, an image that the affair
could sap.
In fact, AIPAC's very success in lobbying for Israel's
interests has also rendered the group, which boasts 65,000 members in all 50
states, vulnerable to charges of undue influence in Washington decision
making.
Late last month, FBI agents probing the Franklin case are said to
have questioned two senior AIPAC officials, its foreign policy affairs director
and its specialist on Iran, the Gulf area and oil-related issues.
4.
Compromising efforts to curb Iran
According to press reports,
Franklin, a lead Iran hand in the Pentagon's policy planning office, is alleged
to have given two AIPAC officials a draft of a presidential order on U.S.-Iran
policy, a draft which then allegedly reached an Israeli diplomat.
The
accounts said that FBI agents , using wiretaps and other surveillance methods,
were monitoring a meeting between AIPAC officials and Naor Gilon, chief of
political affairs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, when Franklin
unexpectedly appeared and joined the group.
Unnamed U.S. officials were
quoted as saying that the alleged document contained a range of proposals aimed
at destabilizing the regime in Tehran.
Now, in the wake of shadowy
reports on Franklin - a key Pentagon advocate of regime change in Tehran - there
is a sense that the case could swing Washington's post-election policy balance,
in favor of those officials who argue for a softer approach toward
Iran.
"Coming after Iraq, this could take away momentum for a
regime-change policy in a second Bush term," Middle East affairs expert Kenneth
Katzman told the Forward newspaper last week.
The affair could also blunt
a longtime Israeli campaign to persuade Washington to marshal its clout to
counter Iran's widely suspected efforts to build nuclear weapons.
5.
Estranging American Jewry
A major figure in the U.S. Jewish
community responded last month with an explicit sense of relief on hearing that
analyst Franklin was not Jewish.
Nonetheless, the affair has already
stirred implied questions of dual loyalty and divided allegiance among American
Jews, until recently a long-buried staple of native U.S. anti-Semitism.
The implied allegations of dual loyalty could have an effect on how
American Jews themselves make career choices, persuading them to steer clear of
government work for fear of falling prey to suspicions.
"Even if the
story evaporates away, its unpleasant 'deposits' will not," Rabinovich argued.
"Every affair of this type which fosters the murky atmosphere [of suspicions of
divided allegiance] makes more people ask themselves if they really want to hire
a Jewish analyst or other professional."
6. Souring ties with
Washington
George W. Bush has often been expansive on matters
related to Israel, lauding Ariel Sharon as a man of peace, inviting the prime
minister to the White House again and again.
But the administration's
silence over the FBI probe - reports of which threatened for a time to shadow
what turned out to be a Bush victory lap at the Republican Convention -
registered loud and clear in Israel, which fervently hopes that the alleged
spying affair will not render administration officials reluctant to appear
overly pro-Israel.
"The most important connection is that of the war in
Iraq, in which Israel is viewed as having dragged the United States into the
war," Rabinovich said.
"At the same time, there are figures in the
American intelligence community, or on its margins, who for years have disliked
the intimacy of the ties, and disliked the fact that Israel both receives U.S.
aid to develop weapons systems and sells weapons systems, which may compete with
American systems."
7. Restirring the Pollard affair
In a
nadir of U.S.-Israel relations. Jonathan Pollard, a naval analyst, passed
highly classified American material to Israeli intelligence agents until he was
seized in the mid-80s.
"Although all of the information currently
available shows that this isn't a new Pollard affair, in certain respects 'the
Franklin affair' could prove more dangerous for the organized Jewish community,"
Haaretz Washington correspondent Nathan Guttman said.
"When the case of
Jonathan Pollard erupted 19 years ago, it was easier for Jews to distance
themselves from him and to claim that the man was a lone operative, not someone
who could tarnish the entire community with the 'dual loyalty' brush.
"Now the situation is more problematic, not because of Larry Franklin,
but because of AIPAC's role."
8. A Congressional
investigation
A top ranking Republican member of the House of
Representatives, Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, has indicated that
Congress could at some point launch its own probe into the Franklin
affair.
At the same time, congressional sources have said that no inquiry
is likely unless the FBI turns up substantive evidence of
wrongdoing.
9. A pattern of allegations
A new challenge
facing Israeli officials is the difficulty of responding to news reports which
are long on accusations but short on substance. A recent Los Angeles Times
report stated:
"There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli
activities directed against the United States," said a former intelligence
official who was familiar with the latest FBI probe and who recently left
government.
"Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a
professional capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive
and active countries targeting the United States."
10. An
anti-neocon backlash
Some U.S. Jewish leaders have suggested that
the Franklin affair was part of an wider campaign by CIA and State Department
officials to sandbag, discredit, and ultimately dethrone the neo-conservatives
in positions of influence.
Some believe that the neocon influence has
given the Sharon government unprecedented access and understanding in the
administration, a status they fear could be blunted by a backlash against neocon
thought.