IP: America Can Persuade Israel ...OPED NYT-SEE SAFIRES article today

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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From: MJacobs240 () aol com
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 01:47:38 EDT
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: Re: IP: America Can Persuade Israel ...OPED NYT-SEE SAFIRES article
today



April 22, 2002
NY TIMES
Democrats vs. Israel

By WILLIAM SAFIRE 

WASHINGTON

Most of the leaders of the Democratic Party and its liberal media voices
distanced themselves from Israel in the midst of its defense against
Arafat's war. Their echo-chambered furor caused George W. Bush to waver
temporarily, but an outcry of moral dismay from Republicans stiffened his
administration's spine.

Too partisan a reading? Consider: As the Palestinian murder of Jewish
civilians exploded, Democrats blamed Bush for having been "disengaged." This
charge of "noninvolvement" had one plain meaning: Bush should have continued
the failed policy of Bill Clinton, pressuring Israel's newly elected leader
to offer again the dangerous concessions of Camp David and Taba.

The Democrats' line was laid down by Clinton himself. He told Reuters on
April 10 that U.S. "involvement" was indispensable, that he was "thrilled"
by the dispatch of Colin Powell to negotiate. He took the Palestinian side
that "there cannot be a cease-fire without a withdrawal" and equated Arafat
and Ariel Sharon as "bull-headed."

Democrat Tom Daschle, Senate majority leader, then blocked a bipartisan
resolution by Senators Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein to designate the
P.L.O. as a terrorist group. "Counterproductive," said Daschle, preferring
to send his Democratic whip, Harry Reid, to repeat the mantra that Bush
"should have been involved in this much earlier."

Democrat Joe Biden then refused to allow Bibi Netanyahu to appear before
Senate Foreign Relations. The former prime minister's purpose was to call
attention to Sharon's acceptance of ‹ and Arafat's rejection of ‹ the U.S.
proposal for a cease-fire that would have saved hundreds of civilian lives.

"Totally inappropriate," decreed Biden, forcing his fellow Democrat Joe
Lieberman and Republican Jon Kyl (denounced as a "sicko" by the chief U.S.
Arab lobbyist) to provide a less prestigious forum to get Israel's message
across.

Lieberman, as he famously did in another moral matter a few years ago, went
against the Democratic leadership. He said Bush's call to stop the
counterattack "muddled our moral clarity" in the war against terror.

This emboldened other presidential candidates, Senator John Kerry and
Representative Richard Gephardt, to speak out against the liberals' crusade
to force Israel to abort its clean-out of terrorist nests. New York's senior
senator, Charles Schumer, had been blasting the hypocrisy of blaming Sharon
for responding as Bush did to terrorist outrage, while the junior senator's
office ritually co-signed a note and put out a release.

But not Al Gore, titular leader of the Democratic Party. Gore re-entered the
political fray in Florida with a harangue about lockboxes and global warming
‹ and not a word about Topic A. Gee, Al used to be an outspoken supporter of
Israel. 

In refusing to take a stand, Gore avoided the ridicule of liberal pundits.
> From Mary McGrory in The Washington Post to Mark Shields on CNN, a falafel
curtain has descended across our continent, transmogrifying the Arab
aggressor into the victim. ABC-Disney leads that parade, as the BBC vies
with Al Jazeera to inflame the European street. Pro-Palestinian journalists
gain cover from Israel's dovish Haaretz, but such dissent is a democracy's
strength; if a Ramallah paper criticized Arafat, the editor's body would be
dragged through the streets as a "collaborator."

Contrariwise, what voices were first to blow the whistle on Bush's
misbegotten need to placate the shaky regimes in Egypt and Jordan?
Conservative commentators, of course. The editorials of The Wall Street
Journal and The Washington Times; the columns of Charles Krauthammer, George
Will, John Leo, Bill Kristol, Michael Kelly and other right thinkers in what
the left still calls "the vast conspiracy" ‹ all were well ahead of
late-arriving Lieberman and his tiny band of principled Democrats.

We are accompanied in support of embattled Israel, as Tish Durkin notes in
the current National Journal, by the much-maligned Christian right, to which
Menachem Begin wisely reached out. These voters are an active part of the
Republican base. 

Here is the political paradox in all this: Eight out of ten American voters
who are Jewish have been voting for candidates of a Democratic Party that
now only tepidly supports the government overwhelmingly chosen by Israelis.
Though foreign policy is not always decisive, perhaps that 80 percent should
think again.   




 

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