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Jewish World Review August 28, 1998 / 6 Elul, 5758
Jonathan S. Tobin
The press release was from the American Jewish Congress -- one of American
Jewry's three prominent, powerful and influential defense agencies -- and
was entitled "Statement from the American Jewish Congress following President
Clinton's Grand Jury Appearance." The statement was issued in the name of
AJCongress President Jack Rosen and was one and half pages of pure White
House spin on L'affaire Lewinsky.
For example: "For too long, the media, the Congress and the American people
as a whole have been caught up in the President's troubles; clearly the demand
on his time to prepare his case have distracted him and all of us from the real
business at hand."
It then listed various foreign and domestic issues (some were real problems,
others were liberal cliches) that Mr. Rosen thought the president had been
too busy to think about because he had to account for some of his misdeeds.
Rosen then lamented, "Through all this, the nation obsesses with the President's
private life." He did refer to the latest and most outrageous scandal attached
to Clinton, as "serious questions of decorum and deportment in public
office."
"But," he continued, "the problems involved do not merit the attention they
have received."
The release went on to laud Clinton as a fitting representative of our
democracy and inaccurately described his re-election as a "landslide" (in
fact, he got less than 50 percent of the vote in a three-way race against
two even more pathetic rivals). Mr. Rosen closed by urging us to "set aside our
preoccupation with foolish things."
That AJCongress considers the president having sex in the Oval Office of the
White House with an intern to be private and none of anyone's business,
strikes me as absurd. That a page and a half of commentary on what the New
Republic has deliciously named "Bimbroglio" would omit any reference to the
president's bare-faced lying is also amazing but in line with the partisan
nature of the statement.
So much for a Jewish commitment to morals and
values.
But let's leave that aside, as these are matters of public debate. What is
really interesting about this embarrassing drivel issued in the name of
American Jewry is that it was sent out in the first place. What makes the
AJCongress think that defending our presidential scoundrel from the
consequences of his despicable behavior and chronic mendacity is a "Jewish"
issue? Unless I missed some previous release, I was still under the
impression
that the business of the American Jewish Congress is defending Jewish
interests--not those of the Democratic party and its leader. Whatever its
other priorities, the AJCongress apparently believes its duty is to stick
with
Mr. Bill until -- as in one of his favorite phrases -- "the last dog dies."
There is certainly room for Jewish partisan groups in the spectrum of our
alphabet soup communal world. But we have two whose job is to spin the Jews
for the two major parties: the National Jewish Democratic Council and the
Republican-backed National Jewish Coalition. They are openly partisan and
perform a useful purpose in both representing the parties to the Jews as
well as Jewish interests to the two parties.
But surely that is not the job of the AJCongress, which was founded by Rabbi
Stephen Wise in 1918 to fight for real Jewish issues such as Jewish
survival,
protecting civil liberties and the rights of minorities and fighting
bigotry.
I may not always agree with their take on every issue but these are clearly
Jewish issues.
Are there so few Jewish issues to speak out on these days, that Jack Rosen
(and the PR staff at the group's Stephen Wise Congress House in Manhattan
who
surely wrote the piece in his name) must freelance to find something to say?
Not likely. But if they think so, then it is way past time that AJCongress
took the advice philanthropist Edgar Bronfman gave in a speech a few years
ago. Namely: merge with the equally irrelevant American Jewish Committee and
the more active Anti-Defamation League and stop wasting so much of American
Jewry's scarce resources.
This eminently sensible proposition won't be tried anytime soon because
merging three Jewish groups into one will reduce the number of Jewish
"leaders"who can gain access to meetings of the Conference of "Major"
American
Jewish Organizations.
But the real problem here is not the obvious organizational redundancy. It
is that AJCongress and other individuals and groups that think like them do
believe Mr. Clinton's political fate is somehow linked to the security of
the Jewish people!
Can they really be so deluded? Every election year we joke about Jews who
define Judaism as the Democratic party platform with holidays thrown in, but
there are a significant number of Jews who feel that way. And at the other
end of the spectrum are a few equally demented souls who feel the same about the
Republicans (Jewish supporters of George Bush quickly come to mind).
Israelis do seem to love him. He is the only American president to act and
speak as if he "feels their pain," and that is flattering to a small Jewish
state still surrounded by enemies. But they are forgetting that this is his
line with everyone -- from countries to star-struck interns he wants to
seduce. However, his passion for Israel is limited to when it is making
concessions to Yasser Arafat. He has little use for and is eager to pressure
its current democratically elected government. American Jews and Israelis
should realize that America's alliance with Israel is bigger than Bill and
stronger than his ability to resist temptation. Almost all of Clinton's
possible successors would be as supportive of it -- if not more so -- as he.
There are a whole range of issues that Jewish groups should be speaking
about:
human rights abroad, persecution of religious believers, immigration rights
and support for Israel, just to name a few. The resources and influence of
groups like AJCongress also need to be focussed on real issues of Jewish
survival, such as the need to prioritize Jewish education and supporting day
schools, not spouting the sterile dogmas of the American Jewish political
past.
If AJCongress thinks defending Bill Clinton's right to disgrace the American
presidency is a Jewish issue, than it is time for them to stop wasting my
fax
paper and throw themselves into the circular file of Jewish
Defending the undefendable;
Or, the AJCongress
should stop wasting
Jewish resources
I GET A LOT OF FAXES IN MY OFFICE. Some are important, some are not. There
are so many that come in on some days that it is hard to keep track of them or
to read them all (Want to get my attention? Send me an e-mail). The inordinate
number of faxes which have no connection to a weekly Jewish newspaper
quickly make their way into the proverbial circular file.
But last week, I received one fax that caught my attention and set me to
thinking again about one of the perennial questions of Jewish journalism:
What is a Jewish issue?
Are groups like the
American Jewish Congress
doing more harm than good?
Their Clinton, right or wrong
Reading it over twice, I couldn't decide what was more breathtaking: the
fatuous ‘my Clinton right or wrong' attitude displayed by a supposedly non-
partisan Jewish defense agency or the stunning demonstration of how
irrelevant and obsolete the release had proved the AJCongress to be.
Seducing Israel by feeling its pain
The delusion about Clinton is reinforced, in part, by his ties to Israel and
the large number of influential Jews in his administration.
JWR contributor Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He was
the recipient of the American Jewish Press Association highest award: First
Place in The Louis Rapoport Award for Excellence in Commentary and Editorial
Writing. The Rapoport award is named for the longtime editor of the
Jerusalem Post and was given to Mr. Tobin at the AJPA's 1997 Simon Rockower Awards dinner
at Cleveland on June 18, 1998.
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