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Friday January 4, 2008

Local Jewish leaders lament Lantos’ retirement

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

Tom Lantos didn’t need people to explain to him why it was important to support Israel. In the most profound way, he got it.

“His passion — his pure passion — for Israel and the destiny of the Jewish people was without a shred of ambivalence,” said Ernest Weiner, longtime regional director of the American Jewish Committee.

Added Yitzhak Santis, the director of Middle Eastern affairs for the Jewish Community Relations Council: “He was always there, he was someone you could turn to. He understood — being a Holocaust survivor — why supporting Israel was so important.”

Lantos, 79, announced Jan. 2 that he has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and will not run this year for a 15th term representing San Francisco and San Mateo in the House of Representatives.

A staffer in Lantos’ Washington office said the Democrat has not yet endorsed a successor. Former State Sen. Jackie Speier had been planning to run against Lantos in the Democratic primary and could be the early favorite to succeed him.

In his 27 years as a congressman, Lantos picked up a reputation as perhaps the most pro-Israel politician in American history. As much as he was a champion to pro-Israel supporters, he was reviled by Israel’s fervent critics — and he did not shy away from confronting them.

Weiner, who has known the congressman since Lantos was a professor at San Francisco State University, recalls a meeting in which Lantos met with leaders of Arab American organizations.

“He maintained his dignity throughout a very, very demanding and almost insulting environment. At some point, someone said, ‘You cannot function as a representative of American Congress and still be so one-sided in favor of Israel.’ And he said, ‘I can be as one-sided as required to favor and support people who are in the right.’”

San Francisco’s Amy Friedkin, who served as president of AIPAC from 2002 to 2004, added that Lantos “was the force behind virtually every pro-Israel piece of legislation in the House. I think this guy chaired more hearings on Middle Eastern policy than anyone.”

Lantos, who was elected chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in January 2007, is also a senior member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He has been one of Congress’ most active participants in formulating legislation aimed at staving off the possibility of a nuclear Iran and has lobbied for a visa to visit the Persian nation without success for more than a decade.

“Dialogue is not appeasement. It is the only avenue toward the eventual solution of these issues,” he said regarding negotiations with Iran and Syria at a San Francisco press conference in April 2007.

“If we refuse to dialogue with these countries, we will be frozen into this intolerable situation.”

Lantos, who was born in Hungary, is the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress. His “unique position as the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress gave him the moral authority to speak out on behalf of those who had no one to speak out for them,” said William Daroff, the Washington director of United Jewish Communities, the federations’ umbrella.

Most recently, Lantos made international headlines for raking Yahoo! executives over the coals for giving Chinese authorities personal information about a journalist that led to his imprisonment.

“While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies,” Lantos told Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and general counsel Michael Callahan. He then told the executives to turn and ask forgiveness from the jailed journalists’ mother — which they did.

“What he brought to Congress [was] the capacity to transmit, as someone who came here as an immigrant and refugee, the American moral stance. That he has done consistently,” Weiner said. “His loss in Congress will be devastating.”

JTA contributed to this report.

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