President Clinton’s newly nominated national security team firmly embraces the Jewish state, the top official of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC said this week in San Francisco.
Still, the immediate future of U.S.-Israel relations is a bit fuzzy.
“Will the new national security team be as focused on Israel as the previous one? Will the Middle East continue to be a priority? We don’t know,” Howard Kohr told an audience of 800 at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual member-building luncheon Monday at the Fairmont Hotel.
Retiring Secretary of State Warren Christopher traveled to the Middle East 23 times during the past four years to promote the peace process, Kohr noted. Will Madeleine Albright, nominated last week to replace Christopher, do the same?
“I’d make the case — probably not,” Kohr said.
Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is known to place top priority on furthering the Bosnian peace, for instance.
Other national changes further obscure the foreign policy picture, Kohr said.
While conventional wisdom labeled the recent national elections as maintaining the status quo, Kohr noted that 88 new members of Congress were elected. Overall, 50 percent of Congress has been elected for the first time within the past four years.
“The Congress is very, very friendly to Israel,” Kohr said in a separate interview. “The biggest task we face is the sheer number of new people we have to develop relationships with.”
For those Congress members overall, he said, U.S. foreign policy is not a priority. AIPAC already has had contact with every new national legislator, but the lobby must “run as fast as we can” to educate the group on such issues as the Mideast peace process and Israel’s annual $3 billion foreign aid package.
Foreign aid will, as usual, be AIPAC’s No. 1 issue in 1997.
“I expect we’ll have another difficult time on our hands,” Kohr said.
With the exception of Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, added Kohr, every top State Department position will be filled with someone new.
Albright, for one, has AIPAC’s seal of approval on U.S.-Israel relations.
“This is someone who our community knows well,” Kohr said in an interview. “She has a spoken record on the issue that is quite positive.”
But while Christopher has earned the confidence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, Kohr said, Albright has had little contact with either one. Building relationships will take time.
Kohr, along with Oslo Accords architect Joel Singer, also spoke this week in Oakland and Palo Alto at similar AIPAC events that included a salute to the Jewish Bulletin’s 100th anniversary.
The speeches were Kohr’s first to the Bay Area as head of the pro-Israel lobby. Kohr, who has worked for AIPAC for eight years, replaced Neal Sher as executive director in June. Kohr previously worked for the Pentagon, the American Jewish Committee, and a Republican group known as the National Jewish Coalition.
In addition to America’s unclear direction in foreign policy, Kohr said, the future of the overall Middle East is as uncertain as ever.
Kohr would not assess Netanyahu’s dealings with the Palestinians. “We’re more interested in the U.S. objectives,” he said.
But he did comment on what he sees as a growing campaign by both the Palestinians and the Europeans to pressure Israel into making concessions.
Five anti-Israel resolutions, “instigated by the Palestinians with the help of Arab countries,” were introduced recently in the United Nations, Kohr said. Only the United States and Israel voted against them.
“The pressure is just beginning,” Kohr said.
Other developments in the Middle East don’t bode well for Israel, he said.
Syria moved troops to its Israeli border this fall. Jordan recently witnessed food riots. Saudi Arabia is undergoing a succession change, he said, and the next king may not be as pro-West as the current one.
Iraq could become stronger than it was before the Persian Gulf War if economic sanctions are completely lifted, Kohr predicted. And Iraq is promising to build weapons of mass destruction and to “foment terror” against the West.
“They don’t hide this. They’re telling everybody,” Kohr said.
To aid Israel, Kohr made a plea to younger American Jews to drop a growing cynicism toward politics and to perpetuate the high level of Jewish political involvement that began after World War II.
Kohr said his father, a survivor of the Dachau concentration camp, could only dream about the access Jews have to government officials here.
“Now just a generation or two later, we’re walking away,” he said. “The stakes are high — for Israel and for ourselves.”