- 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.
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- The choice of New York City dovetails smoothly with an
unprecedented campaign by the Republican Party to win over traditionally
Democratic Jewish voters.
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- 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.
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- But with the clock ticking toward November, the Bush
bid to court American Jews shows signs of having stalled.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- Another of the defendants, Deputy Hamas politcal 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.
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- A U.S. court indicted Abu Marzouk in absentia, after
which 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Bush: Good for the settlers?
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- "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.'"
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- 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.
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- "There is no one who is capable of evacuating settlements,"
Ratzon said, adding that he believes that Sharon knows this as well.
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- 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?"
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