WASHINGTON — An increasing number of people are blaming the looming Iraq war on Jewish officials in the Bush administration.
The sentiments echo those made in 1991 by conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan, who said the Persian Gulf War was being touted by “the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.”
Given widespread skepticism of the U.S. motives for a strike on Baghdad, some Jewish leaders say there is a potential for the “amen corner” comments to gain as much — if not more — traction as they did a decade ago.
“There is a greater potential for mischief on this issue now than 11 or 12 years ago,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Ever since military action against Iraq became a possibility, the American Jewish community has been treading lightly so as not to fuel criticism that the war would be for Israel’s benefit.
Many are cognizant of the discomfort the Jewish community felt after Buchanan made his comments in 1991, and want to keep Israel as much out of the mix as possible.
Israel, too, has taken a low profile, though the widespread view is that Jerusalem supports U.S. efforts to dismantle a regime that is a threat to its security.
Among those being targeted are Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense; Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board; Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy; and Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon’s comptroller.
The comments are predominantly in the international media — specifically in Europe and the Arab world — but are also finding their way into print in the United States.
And, in contrast to 1991, the attacks on Jewish officials have come from the liberal as well as the conservative media.
“They use code words,” Lawrence Kaplan, senior editor of The New Republic, said of the commentators.
“Very rarely does anyone come out and say it’s a bunch of Jews,” said Kaplan, co-author of a new book with William Kristol, “The War over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission.”
Kaplan says the problem is not that people are saying a war with Iraq would help Israel, it’s the insinuation that Jewish and Zionist members of the Bush administration are drumming up the war for Israel’s benefit.
“Rather than being a matter of correlation, they’re making it causation,” he said.
He notes that there are many non-Jewish advocates for war in the Bush staff — such as Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — but they are never mentioned in these articles that speak of Israel’s interests.
Jewish leaders are reaching out to senior Bush administration officials, asking them to think about the ramifications their comments related to a war could have for the Jewish community.
But because Jewish leaders do not see the rash of remarks as a conspiracy, they say it is easier to address each comment individually, rather than speaking out publicly.
“People will always say these things,” one Jewish official said. “It holds as much water as the reports that Jews were responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center.”