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June 11, 2004/Sivan 22 5764, Vol. 56, No. 38
Reagan seen as friend
Despite occasional differences, Reagan advocated for Jewish causes
RON KAMPEAS
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Ronald Reagan's presidency was a time when U.S. Jewish power grew to new levels of influence - and when Jews learned of its limits.
Thanks to Reagan, who died June 5 at age 93 after a long struggle with Alzheimer's, the years 1981-1989 saw the consolidation of bipartisan support for the causes Jews held dearest: a secure Israel and the freedom of Soviet Jews.
It also saw the Republican Party become an acceptable option for Jews, ensuring that no single party could take the Jewish vote for granted.
"Historians will look back and say the Reagan years were the years the Jewish community looked back and tried the Republican Party on for size," said Marshall Breger, Reagan's liaison to the Jewish community from 1983 to 1985.
"The Reagan administration turned the Jews into a two-party community," he said.
Yet Reagan also dealt the Jewish community two severe blows when he triumphed in pushing through Congress the sale of powerful spy planes to Saudi Arabia and when he delivered a forgive-and-forget paean at the Bitburg cemetery in Germany, where Nazi SS troops are buried.
Also, some analysts have said the Reagan administration created the problems that beset domestic issues important to many Jews, such as abortion rights, poverty relief and government medical assistance.
Despite such issues, Reagan's presidency now is seen by many as halcyon days for Jewish issues in foreign policy, principally because of the effects of Reagan's greatest triumph: the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
"The end of the Cold War was important not just for the free world but for diminishing the cause of rejectionist Arab states and enabling Soviet Jews to be free," said David Makovsky, then a leading Soviet Jewry activist and now a top Middle East analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Mark Levin, also a prominent Soviet Jewry activist in those days, emphasized that the benefits the struggle for Soviet Jewry derived from Reagan's crusade against the "Evil Empire" were not incidental; for Reagan, Soviet Jewish freedom was central to the struggle.
Reagan made sure Soviet Jewry was a priority at each meeting between U.S. and Soviet officials, along with nuclear disarmament and economic assistance, recalled Levin, now the executive director of National Conference Soviet Jewry (NCSJ): Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eurasia.
"He was someone who was truly committed to overturning the Communist system and gaining freedom for all people, but he had a particularly soft spot in his heart for Soviet Jewry," Levin said.
In a letter of consolation sent to Reagan's wife, Nancy, Israeli Cabinet minister Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet refusenik, expressed his gratitude to the ex-president.
"Former President Reagan changed the march of history and the fate of millions of people because he was one of the few, outstanding leaders who brought about the collapse of the Soviet Empire," Sharansky wrote.
Reagan also earned Jewish admiration for appointing secretaries of state who were sympathetic to Israel. Alexander Haig and George Schultz both broke with the traditional "bad cop" role that the Cabinet officer usually plays with the Jewish state.
But the president's visceral sympathy for Israel was undermined by his uneasy relations with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The leaders' styles inevitably clashed: the avuncular, give-me-the-big-picture movie star, versus the proper European-born lawyer.
When Begin said "no problem" about settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, Reagan assumed Israel was agreeing to a freeze; but Begin merely was saying, with characteristic confidence, that the settlements should not pose a problem.
"Theirs were different personalities," Breger said.
The first crisis of Israel-U.S. ties during Reagan's presidency was occasioned by Israel's attack in June 1981 on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor.
Reagan, was upset that an ally ostensibly was reinforcing perceptions that all nuclear power posed dangers, and he suspended arms shipments to Israel in response. Reagan said Iraq, which the United States then supported, may have been persuaded to use the nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes.
Reagan also resented the lobbying by Israel and its supporters against the sale of AWACS spy planes to Saudi Arabia in 1981. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee got the House of Representatives to oppose the sale.
When the battle went to the Senate, Reagan, eager for a triumph with an irascible Congress, played hardball. He and his aides raised the specter of dual loyalty charges.
"The administration was out there saying 'Reagan or Begin,'" recalled Ira Forman, then a political director for AIPAC and now the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.
Begin's opposition to the sale especially peeved Reagan and on Oct. 1 of that year, Reagan famously said, "It is not the business of other nations to make American foreign policy."
That set off a wave of anti-Semitic hate mail to senators. The AWACS sale triumphed in the Senate and the apparent succumbing to warnings about excessive Jewish influence was a shock for a pro-Israel community that had been confident in its influence since the Yom Kippur war.
Reagan attempted to make amends after the vote by proposing a strategic relationship with Israel in November 1981. Begin and the Knesset surprised Reagan a month later by annexing the Golan Heights, territory claimed by Syria.
The most serious test of Reagan's relationship with the Jews came when Reagan announced in April 1985 that he would visit Bitburg, a World War II military cemetery, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of D-Day.
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