Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 1988, Page 12

Candidate Watch

The Record: Vice Presidential Candidates and the Middle East

"While both of this year's vice presidential candidates are considered basically strong on Israel, neither of them was at the forefront in fighting for pro-Israel measures on or off the floor of the Senate. " —Howard Rosenberg, the Jewish Week, New York, Aug. 26, 1988.

Since either of the major party vice presidential candidates may be only a heartbeat away from the presidency after January 1989, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, offers, at the suggestion of one of its readers, former Ambassador John Tuthill of Washington, DC, a look at their Senate voting records on Middle East-related issues. Neither might have voted just as they did if they had known they would be contending for the favor of the national electorate in the fall of 1988.

Pro-Israel activists credit Sen. Dan Quayle with being strong on defense in general and with playing a key role on the Senate Armed Services Committee in getting for Israel some of the funding for US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) research. He helped set the cost-sharing formula whereby the US pays 80 percent and Israel pays 20 percent of research costs for the Arrow anti-tactical ballistic missile, a project vital to Israel's defense against missiles launched by Arab neighbors, and one Israel had started alone before it realized the idea could be put into the SDI hopper.

The Israel Lobby's Assessment of Quayle

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) says Quayle "has been a supporter of a strong US-Israel relationship," and "helped to lead legislative efforts to designate Israel as a major non-NATO ally of the US, has supported legislation to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, has voted to establish a free trade area between the United States and Israel, and ... voted to close offices of the PLO in the US. "

That's the end of the nice things the pro-Israel professionals have to say about Quayle's 12 years in Congress. They criticize him for often opposing foreign aid bills, although his opposition, presumably, was not because about one-third of the money in such bills is earmarked for Israel, but because in conservative Indiana foreign aid is unpopular among Republicans.

In the Senate, Quayle has opposed foreign aid two out of six times, most recently on July 7 as one of only 15 senators who dared oppose the 1989 foreign aid appropriation which, as usual, contained $3 billion for Israel.

The Washington Jewish Week reports Quayle "has also almost always voted in favor of US arms sales to 'moderate' Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Jordan," and "some Jews were also troubled by Quayle's support of the so-called 'New Right' social agenda—including his ardent support for prayer in the public schools and his unrelenting opposition to abortion."

Rabbi Alexander Schindler, a political liberal and president of the Jewish reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations, called Quayle's selection "a bitter disappointment, largely because of his stridently conservative positions on domestic issues."

Bentsen's Ranking with the Israel Lobby

Lloyd Bentsen got somewhat higher marks from the pro-Israel establishment. Howard Rosenberg wrote in the Jewish Week of New York: "Overall on Israel-related issues, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen...comes out slightly ahead of ... the Republican nominee," and "on domestic issues, the analysis shows Bentsen far ahead of Quayle on matters of Jewish concern."

Bentsen played a role in implementing the 1985 US-Israel free trade areas agreement, although he was not a co-sponsor. He was a co-sponsor if legislation to close PLO offices in Washington and New York. Further, in 1988, Bentsen co-sponsored an amendment to the trade bill to immunize Israel from any protectionist measures other legislators might attach to that same trade bill.

In 1984, Bentsen was co-sponsor with Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (D-NY) of a Senate bill (which was not voted upon) to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. His record on arms sales to Arab countries follows no particular pattern. Similarly, his frequent votes against foreign aid, like Quayle's, are seen as opposition to foreign aid in general rather than to the specific amount going to Israel, since Texas Democrats, like Indiana Republicans, don't fancy overseas handouts..

On domestic issues of interest to Jews, Bentsen supported a bill to allow members of the armed forces to wear skullcaps, which Quayle opposed. Both senators in 1985 unsuccessfully urged President Reagan to cancel a visit to a military cemetery in Bitburg where members of the Nazi SS were buried along with other German war dead.

Summarizing positions of both vice presidential candidates, Rabbi Louis Bernstein, chairman of the Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi and a former president of the Rabbinical Council of America, declared that Bentsen "has been called 'moderately better' on Jewish issues and that's wrong. He's much better."

David Luchins, an aide to Moynihan and a Jewish Orthodox lay leader, was quoted in Jewish Week of New York as commenting: "Had the Democrats nominated a guy who had Dan Quayle's voting record, all hell would have broken loose."

"Pandering": Who is Demeaned?

"The spectre of the holocaust and the fear that anti-Semitism lies dormant, but not extinguished, gives rise to untold anxiety whenever Jews are pandered to as a one-issue voting bloc whose primary loyalty to America may be in question. " —Peter Hugh Schweitzer, Washington Jewish Week, Sept. 2, 1988.

If there is validity to the statement above, Jewish anxiety must have reached unprecedented levels in September as election day approached and presidential candidates George Bush and Michael Dukakis completed speeches to B'nai B'rith's national convention in Baltimore, Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci spoke to Hadassah women in Washington, and Secretary of State George Shultz addressed a conference sponsored by the hard-line pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Jewish audiences at all four events successfully concealed whatever pain they may have felt at the pandering praise of Israel. Omission of serious comments on the Palestinian problem and its effects on American interests at home and abroad apparently demonstrated what the four speakers thought of the proposition that members of these particular audiences owed "primary loyalty to America."

Americans have become accustomed to the pro-Israel hyperbole of congressional candidates before Jewish audiences in their constituencies. When candidates for the highest office in the land begin making ritual protestations to Israel, however, thoughtful Americans become acutely uncomfortable. In the primaries, with the exception of Jesse Jackson—whose frank advocacy of both Palestinian self-determination and Israeli security accurately reflects the sentiments of a majority of Americans who have an opinion on the subject—no candidate of either party spoke honestly or frankly to mainstream American Jews. They still are dealt with by political professionals as essential campaign contributors and volatile one-issue voters.

Dukakis won't rule out US recognition of a Palestinian state. Bush won't concede relocation of the US Embassy in advance of peace negotiations.

However, it seemed significant that, Jesse Jackson aside, the two successful candidates, George Bush and Michael Dukakis, were also the two candidates who gave up the least to the Israel lobby during the ritual badgering by the Jewish media and organizations, which culminates in appearances just before the New York primary election before the Council of Presidents of National Jewish Organizations. Each candidate surrendered only one position that would cause him serious loss of flexibility as president. George Bush said he would under no circumstances support a Palestinian state. It was an unnecessary and foolish concession but it was in tune with the Shultz peace plan which was viable at the time Bush took the position. Michael Dukakis said he would advocate moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which also was foolish to concede in advance of peace negotiations since the status of Jerusalem will be the single most sensitive issue facing negotiators. It appeared, however, that journalists had trapped Dukakis into taking the position with tricky questions whose import he didn't understand.

At this writing each has stood by his own mistake, but refused to make the mistake of his opponent. Dukakis won't rule out US recognition of a Palestinian state. Bush won't concede relocation of the US Embassy in advance of peace negotiations.

That is about all that can be said at this stage of the campaign for the intellectual integrity of either candidate on the Middle East. Dukakis, who stands four square for human rights elsewhere, won't be drawn into the applicability of his credo to the Palestinians. Bush, strong on defense and foreign affairs, asserts that Israel has "strategic value" to the US and ignores the reality that America's prickly client's refusal to make peace or make friends in the Middle East is at the root of American failures and Soviet successes in the area.

Although neither candidate is prepared to test it, there is considerable evidence that American Jewish voters do care about their country's fortunes and, in casting their votes, do consider not only domestic "Jewish" issues such as the growing influence of Christian fundamentalists in the Republican Party, but also a variety of environmental, social, and other concerns they share with all Americans. Although there is a slow, long term shift to the Republicans from the almost unanimous Jewish support for the Democratic Party in the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, it's not statistically significant on a year-to-year basis.

In the 1984 elections, 70 percent of American Jews who voted did so for Walter Mondale. On September 11, 1988, host John McLaughlin asked each of the panelists on his popular NBC televised talk show what percentage of the "Jewish vote" would go to Bush. Estimates ranged from 20 to 30 percent.

At this stage in the campaign, pandering has reached the point of diminishing returns. Use throughout September by each of the candidates of surrogates to accuse the other of working with anti-Semitic staffs surely is more demeaning to the accuser than the accused. Therefore, barring a slip in the debates, the numbers above should hold. Such a slip presumably would have to be more serious than George Bush's firm press conference assurance on Sept. 16 that he stands for "anti-bigotry," "anti-racism," and "anti-Semitism," That characteristic foot-in-the-mouth bobble barely made the newspapers.