Printer Friendly

Email to A Friend

Friday February 23, 2007

As Democrats flex their muscles, Jewish groups assail Bush agenda

by ron kampeas
jta

washington | As major Jewish groups prepare for their annual national conferences in the coming weeks, their discontent with the Bush administration appears high on their agendas.

Aided by an adversarial Congress wielding its power for the first time since President Bush was elected, these groups are taking strong stands against Bush administration policies, from Iraq and Israel-Palestinian peace initiatives to gay rights and tax cuts.

Speaking off the record, Jewish officials say the relationship between the White House and the newly Democratic Congress has energized some members of the community long unhappy with much of the administration’s domestic policy and wary of Bush’s final-days push for peace in the Middle East. 

The Union of Reform Judaism’s executive committee, due to meet March 12, is considering a resolution to oppose Bush’s troop surge in blunt terms. Reform leaders will raise the issue during the Jewish Council for Public Affairs plenum that begins Sunday, Feb. 25.

In a letter to lay and clerical leaders, Robert Heller, chairman of the URJ board of trustees, and Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the group’s president, said it was time to call for immediate action.

A resolution opposing the war, passed overwhelmingly at the Reform movement’s biennial general assembly in late 2005, was less confrontational, calling for the United States to begin considering a withdrawal.

Republican opposition to the war is growing as well. At the least, if JCPA, the consensus-driven umbrella group for national organizations and Jewish community relations organizations, also takes a strong anti-war posture, it would place the Jewish community squarely against the president on the signature foreign policy controversy as Bush’s term nears its finish.

The JCPA plenum will feature a session with David Satterfield, the top Iraq adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will address the plenum together with Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), the most strident war critic within the Republican Party. That will be followed by an open discussion, when Reform leaders will be asked to make their case.

Another area promising tension with the Bush administration is its drive to revive the Israel-Palestinian peace process. Pro-Israel and Jewish Democrats, backed by the pro-Israel lobby, often drive congressional Middle East policy, and already have made clear their skepticism about Rice’s efforts. 

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the Jewish chairwoman of the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee’s foreign operations subcommittee, has placed a hold on Rice’s request of $86 million to help prop up Mahmoud Abbas, the relatively moderate Palestinian Authority president.

Lowey will be a speaker at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual policy forum March 11 to 13. Set to appear at the same session is Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), a top Republican who also opposes funding for the Palestinian Authority. Esther Kurz, one of AIPAC’s top Hill lobbyists, will chair the session.

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), the Jewish chairman of the House’s Middle East subcommittee, dedicated one of his first sessions last week to a skeptical overview of Rice’s renewed push for peace. Especially discouraging, Ackerman said, was Abbas’ recent national unity deal with Hamas, a terrorist group that rejects Israel’s existence. 

“Must Israel renegotiate its right to exist every time the Palestinians change their government?” Ackerman asked. “This is lunacy.” 

There are hints of a split within the Jewish community on one key Bush foreign policy: isolating Iran. Democrats want to keep Iran engaged, while insisting they won’t rule out a military option to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Bush administration, backed strongly by AIPAC, is wary of dialogue, worrying that it buys the Islamic Republic time to build a nuclear capacity. 

The URJ resolution on Iraq suggests an alignment with the pro-dialogue voices among Democrats, including Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the House majority leader, and Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who was John Kerry’s running mate in the 2004 presidential election.

The resolution also passively encourages diplomacy with Iran and Syria.

Domestically, there is plenty of fodder on the JCPA menu. A draft resolution on “civil rights and individual liberties” maintains that “efforts to amend the federal or state constitutions and statutes, or local ordinances to narrow the rights of individuals, or to strip courts of authority to consider various types of civil rights claims, pose a profound danger to civil rights and liberties.” 

The resolution was drafted particularly with statutes in mind that seek to constitutionally ban gay marriage. Bush favors such a constitutional amendment. 

Other proposed JCPA resolutions reflecting a renewed commitment to liberal values include one backing gun controls and another opposing tax cuts in the context of state and federal budget-balancing efforts.  The latter resolution comes in the wake of an internal United Jewish Communities memo that draws a direct line between a social service crisis and Bush’s enthusiasm for tax cuts.

Until now, Jewish social service lobbyists have resisted making explicit such a linkage, not wanting to antagonize the White House or Bush’s Jewish supporters. 

The JCPA, National Council of Jewish Women and the Anti-Defamation League are supporting a renewed congressional push to expand hate-crime laws to include crimes based on sexual preference. Republican leaders heeding conservative Christians who reject any recognition of gay rights have quashed such legislation in Congress. 

Other liberal initiatives this winter are not necessarily at odds with Bush administration policy. A JCPA resolution on comprehensive immigration reform would decriminalize the status of some undocumented immigrants, a position at odds with some congressional Republicans but aligned with Democrats and the White House. 

JCPA delegates also will vote on a resolution to isolate Sudan over its failure to comply with international demands to stop the genocide in its Darfur region, a policy in line with Bush’s tough posture.

Did you find this article interesting? Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and you'll be notified each week when "J." goes online. We'll tell you about the most important stories of the week and give you a link to each one.

This page contains a BETA version of Amazon contextual links. They are marked by the dashed underline.  Your purchases support our site. At times they point to items which are not related to the actual link. Please alert us by email if you discover objectionable links.