AIPAC's 1993 Convention: Scuffling on the Bridge

By Ian Williams

Imagine an ocean liner steaming due north. There is a scuffle on the bridge and, with no announcement to the passengers, the ship makes a 180-degree turn and starts sailing south. Most of the passengers don't notice. They thought that they were going that way all along. But about 20 percent look profoundly puzzled. The sun is on the wrong side, and the messages from the bridge are in a different voice, saying different things. That was the situation of 3,000 delegates to the March 20-23 Washington, DC convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC's first convention since the inauguration of its chosen candidate, President Bill Clinton.

Some of them were merely bewildered—like the one who publicly accused AIPAC Director Thomas Dine of working for the Arabs and trying to organize a PLO takeover of the organization. Others wanted to know why the PLO had been omitted from AIPAC's list of "fundamentalist terrorist" organizations like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Dine's reply that the PLO was a secular and not a fundamentalist organization was evasive. Clearly, however, the PLO is being " un-demonized. "

AIPAC's leaders do not want to be caught out by a change of policy in Israel, and this seemed quite acceptable to a majority of those attending. Most American Jews, including many AIPAC members, always have been happier with a Labor Party in power in Israel than with the unsophisticated and uncompromising Likud. They seldom said so publicly when Shamir was in power, however, to avoid accusations of breaking solidarity—by the very AIPAC leaders now furiously courting Rabin.

It was the leadership rather than the rank and file of AIPAC and other Jewish organizations which voiced enthusiastic and uncritical support for the Likud government, and thus became increasingly out of tune with the American Jews they claimed to represent. Hence the scuffle on the bridge. Some of those who were unchangeable were thrown overboard—like previous AIPAC President David Steiner, whose leaked tapes scuppered the last-ditch battle of the Likudniks to stop Warren Christopher's appointment as Clinton's secretary of state.

Christopher's arrival to speak at the convention was greeted with a prolonged standing ovation. Many delegates were grateful to him for averting threatened United Nations Security Council sanctions over Israel's refusal to repatriate immediately the 400 Palestinian Muslims it expelled last December. Above all, however, they seemed to be demonstrating their repudiation of the campaign against him by the old brigade. While his speech was ostensibly everything that they wanted to hear, there were some subtle points that delegates may have missed in their enthusiasm.

After a series of purges, the new AIPAC sounds like Peace Now itself.

Christopher reported that "every Arab leader with whom I met made it clear that they are serious about pursuing peace. " That statement could be taken as a reminder that any failure to restart negotiations would not automatically be blamed on the Arab side. Similarly, he defined the limits of U.S, support for Israel in the negotiations as an "honest broker. "

"We will be there to probe positions, clarify responses, help define common ground, offer ideas and bridge differences, " Christopher told the AIPAC delegates. "This is the meaning of full partnership, and it reflects our determination to work with all parties to facilitate negotiations that will take into account the needs and concerns of Israel, the Arabs and the Palestinians. " (A month later, Christopher went further, and told delegates to the convention of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee that he hoped to pursue a truly "even-handed" policy on the Middle East-which in the past Likudniks always insisted was a codeword for anti-Israel.)

Reflecting the changed mood, Dine also refused to take a stand on other issues. He temporized on the question of whether the organization should throw its weight behind the campaign for amnesty for Israeli

An Especially Delicate Matter

This was an especially delicate matter. Americans for Peace Now always has been as much anti-Likud/pro-Labor as it was pro-peace. The organization has many friends in the new White House administration. It has even closer finks with Rabin's government—which is publicly committed to territorial concession—so it was no great surprise when, a week later, APN was admitted to the Conference of Presidents.

Symbolizing the change at AIPAC were the two massive screens displaying the face of Yitzhak Rabin on a satellite link from Jerusalem. Rabin is no liberal peacenik but, although he hedged his speech with restrictions and small print, he was talking about concessions and compromises to an organization whose leaders, a year before, had been applauding the Likud line of no compromise on territory or on settlements. American Jews espousing views then like Rabin's now were accused of thought-crime by AIPAC's leaders, who had been so pro-Shamir that Rabin had given them a semi-public dressing down when he became prime minister.

However, after a series of purges, the new AIPAC sounds like Peace Now itself, which should make it more compatible with the overwhelmingly liberal American Jewish community. President Clinton was canonized in an MTV-style video promoting the organization—and of course there is little immediate chance of any tension between him and Rabin.

As a candidate, Clinton was prepared to go all the way with the Likud's intransigent Yitzhak Shamir, so Rabin's relative moderation is easily lived with. As Rabin reported to the conference, his new chum in the White House has offered to maintain Israel's foreign aid for 1994, and has even promised to raise the question of the Arab boycott of Israel at the G-7 talks.

Rabin had promised to attend the conference, which would have met AIPAC's desperate need for reassurance that it still was the Israeli government's official intermediary in Washington. However, his decision to return home early from the United States because of the worsening crisis at home was seen by some as a sign that the tensions between him and AIPAC had not completely subsided.

In fact, from the beginning the Israeli prime minister has made it clear that he should handle Israel's relations with the administration, and AIPAC should stick to Congress. Oddly, Rabin has always prided himself on his personal charm with other leaders although, as one old-guard AIPAC official pointed out sardonically, he has been thoroughly disliked by almost every president who has suffered prolonged exposure to Rabin's abrasive and egotistical style.

However, on this occasion his four-hour meeting with Clinton had not yet produced such effects on the latest U.S. president to be exposed. He reported to the convention that he returned home "with great confidence in the president of the United States and his administration, his friendliness to Israel, his readiness to assist Israel in our efforts to achieve peace and to maintain our security.

Rabin also pointed out, however, that "peace you make not with friends, but with present enemies, and therefore there is a need to solve practical issues and to overcome psychological barriers—barriers that have been built in tens of years of violence, war, terror, hatred on both sides and backlog of negative emotions."

It is difficult to imagine hearing such sentiments from Shamir. Indeed, a year earlier, it would have been difficult to imagine hearing such sentiments from an AIPAC platform. In concluding, Rabin tried to lessen the impact of his absence from the AIPAC podium by saying that "from time to time, we had differences, but I am sure that there is no more effective organization of American people who are ready to support, to help Israel."

Rabin's message on the peace talks was reinforced by Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Itamar Rabinovitch, who said firmly, "Peace has to be based on compromise, but compromise has to be mutual. " He concluded that, "We will have to pay a cost, and we'll have to make some concessions. " When this did not get much applause, he invited the audience to "applaud the concessions that the other side will have to make. " In a conciliatory mood, he thanked the Moroccan ambassador to the U.N. for his part in averting sanctions over the deportees.

With the end of the Cold War, Israel is no longer able to invoke the communist threat to justify the supply of arms and the special relationship with America. But Rabin, Dine and Rabinovitch all were united on the threat of "Islamic fundamentalism," which, they said, was "inspired, organized, and instigated by Iran." With Iran anointed the new bogeyman now that Saddam Hussain has been humbled, one would never guess that Israel was throughout the 1980s a prolific clandestine supplier of arms to the mullahs from the way in which the AIPAC speakers talked in 1993 about their former trading partner.

All were united on the threat of "Islamic fundamentalism"

Predictably, it was implied, in a low key, but repetitively, that the World Trade Center bombing proved that the U.S. and Israel were joint targets of a great fundamentalist conspiracy. But some congressional supporters facing strong election challenges in 1994 got the message mixed up in their eagerness to please AIPAC audiences. For example, Senator Dennis DeConcini of Arizona circulated copies of the Congressional Record in which he had "recently received reports that Hamas has replaced Hezbollah as the popular violent arm of the Palestinian Liberation Organization." Hamas, he continued, was "gaining funding and training from Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan."

If AIPAC is in any way learning from its mistakes, it is not doing so in public. No one mentioned that ex-President George Bush had defied the Israel lobby on an issue of its own choosing, the loan guarantees, and had left the lobby impotent. The only reference to the subject was Thomas Dine's attempt to credit AIPAC for the fact that the first installment of the guarantees was eventually paid. He did not mention that they were paid by Bush to Rabin, after Rabin had made some of the concessions refused by Shamir. Even less did Dine mention that Rabin was only speaking at the convention because Bush's refusal to buckle to Israel lobby pressure had caused Shamir's defeat in the 1992 Israeli elections.

However, the new AIPAC president, Steven Grossman, is a different breed from the old Jewish leaders, who clawed their way to the top by dint of internal Jewish politics, big donations and professions of undying loyalty to Israel. Grossman was chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, and is not dependent on Jewish organizations for his power. It shows in his behavior. He walked the floor, talking to anyone who approached, putting some truth in the rumor that under him AIPAC would be more open and accessible.

He obviously is someone who will be listened to in the White House. Unfortunately, ascendancy of the Rabin supporters is no guarantee of justice for the Palestinians—as the death rate and deportations in the territories demonstrate.

A Matter of Political Convenience

Since some AIPAC-supported members of Congress, like badly informed Senator DeConcini, use flamboyant pro-Israel rhetoric to raise funds and to defeat rivals, their interest in Israel is more a matter of political convenience than principle. In a time of federal budget cutbacks some of them may try to get extra funds for Israel, whether or not the Israeli government asks for them, thus provoking exasperation and confrontation with the White House.

Dine signaled one such issue in his speech to the convention. He said that following the Arrow interceptor missile project (for which the U.S. has sent some $300 million to Israel), "We need to ensure that the wherewithal will exist for Israel to acquire a new 'boost phase interceptor' which would knock out missiles during their launch from enemy territory. "

In such cases of potential conflict, it is worth remembering that special interest levers like those AIPAC has into the administration and into Congress have two ends. When the president wants something in the Middle East, AIPACpolitical appointees in his administration like White House Middle East Adviser Martin Indyk will be expected to pull AIPAC into line with the White House. And with Democrats controlling both Congress and the administration, AIPAC cannot play one against the other so easily. Things may not be as clear-cut as they seem—especially since George Bush proved, as did Dwight Eisenhower long before him, that when a determined president decides to challenge AIPAC, he will have overwhelming support on the issue from an increasingly informed American public.

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations.