washington | For weeks ahead of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs plenum, community leaders tiptoed around how to deal with growing Jewish opposition to the Iraq war: Mention it? Debate it? Pass a resolution addressing it?
“Fuggedaboutit” was more the attitude this week at the annual parliament that attempts to formulate Jewish community consensus on the issues of the day. Who has time to deal with Iraq when Iran is turning into such a headache?
Yet on the issue of Iran as well, consensus proved elusive among the Jewish Community Relations Council members across the United States.
Off the record, delegates said the JCPA’s failure to agree on an Iran policy underscores the American Jewish community’s nervousness about taking any militant posture in the Middle East given the Iraq quagmire.
Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director of the S.F.-based JCRC, said that one shouldn’t read too much into the supposed disharmony over Iran. “I have the feeling the plenum already had a strong existing position on Iran, one of the most important priorities in our community. The JCPA has a strong position on Iran and so do most of the JCRCs,” he said.
Kahn and others met and lobbied a number of senators and members of Congress on Tuesday, Feb. 27 and Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons — and how to oppose it — was one of the issues discussed.
Yet the delegates became mired in debates over whether Iran should be on the agenda.
That left them little energy to deal with what had been a compromise formula for an open debate on the Iraq war. After the Iran discussion was resolved — by referring the issue to a committee — scarcely a dozen of the more than 400 delegates remained for the Iraq debate.
Other resolutions considered at the Feb. 25-27 plenum in Washington included:
• A resolution encouraging financial support for Israelis displaced by last summer’s war with Hezbollah and targeted by Palestinian rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip. A separate resolution sponsored by the Orthodox Union encouraged aid to settlers evacuated from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
• A resolution calling for targeted divestment from Sudan. The resolution passed.
• Resolutions also passed opposing criminalization of social-service provision to illegal immigrants; advocating limits on handgun sales; advocating decreased dependence on fossil fuels; opposing social-service funding cuts at the local and state levels, as well as some tax cuts; and opposing laws and constitutional amendments that deprived groups of civil liberties, an implicit rebuke to the anti-gay marriage movement.
The absence of Iran from the agenda led the Boston JCRC delegation to offer its own hastily drafted resolution to launch a “Stop Iran” movement.
Martin Raffel, director of the JCPA’s Task Force on Israel and Other International Concerns, noted that the umbrella body’s Iran policy was evolving. He cited an effort to consolidate a national strategy outlined in a Jan. 30 memo to JCRC professionals and the JCPA executive.
Components of that strategy, according to the memo, would include building coalitions with non-Jewish groups, lobbying, media advocacy and American Jewish pressure on foreign governments and businesses that deal with Iran.
Kahn agreed with Raffel, adding, “I wouldn’t say we shouldn’t rush to action. The only issue was, without any notice, a specific resolution — that, frankly, needed a lot of work on the messaging” was thrust upon the delegates.
Once Raffel outlined the memo, the plenum voted overwhelmingly — with only the Boston delegation opposed — to refer the Boston resolution to Raffel’s task force.