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October 22, 2004/Cheshvan 7 5765, Vol. 57, No. 8
Jews turning against war in Iraq
RON KAMPEAS
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON - When it comes to the Iraq war, U.S. Jews have followed much the same trajectory as their fellow Americans: solid support leading into the war, grave doubts about it now.
What sets many Jews apart is how they factored Israel into both equations. In 2003, they felt gratitude that Saddam Hussein, one of Israel's most implacable foes, had been removed, yet there are concerns now that a mis-conceived or mismanaged adventure has empowered another implacable foe of Israel, the Iranian theocracy.
"The only nation that seems to have benefited by our invasion of Iraq is Iran, which is a far greater threat to Israel than Iraq was," said U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, (D-Nev.), a Jew and an outspoken pre-war proponent of invasion who feels President Bush deceived her.
Since the end of the war, Iran has established broad influence among Shi'ites in Iraq, and has come much closer to developing a nuclear weapons capacity that Iranian leaders hint might be used against Israel - a result, critics say, of neglect by a Bush administration obsessed with Iraq.
Reliable polls demonstrate a profound turning away from the war among the general Jewish community.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said that American Jewish leadership - which deals with the war on terrorism on a day-to-day basis - naturally was prone to be more aware of the importance of Iraq in that war.
"For those of us who deal every day with the issues, the war on terrorism is the defining issue of the 21st century, and the war in Iraq is part of that," Hoenlein said.
Jewish opposition to the war is pronounced - 10 percentage points more than among the general population, according to some national polls - and likely plays a role in continued, solid Jewish support for Democrats, despite the unprecedented backing for Israel that President Bush has shown.
At the end of 2002, just months before the war, an American Jewish Committee poll found that 59 percent of U.S. Jews approved U.S. action against Iraq, while 36 percent disapproved. A year later, those numbers had flipped to 54 percent against and 43 in favor.
In the most recent American Jewish Committee poll, posted last month, 66 percent of American Jews surveyed disapproved, and 30 percent approved. General polling of Americans shows opposition to the war in the mid-50s.
"There are more people who are conflicted now, who want to remove themselves from support of the war," Rabbi Amy Schwartzman of Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Va., said of her congregation.
That's a striking shift, she noted, given the number of military families at her temple. Schwartzman estimates that between six and 10 congregants have been in active military service throughout the Iraq war.
A number of factors have played into the reversal, many of them common to other Americans: the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, the uneasy transition to Iraqi rule and the increasing casualties among both U.S. military personnel and Iraqi civilians.
But both before and after the war, the danger facing Israel was a particularly strong factor driving Jewish opinion.
"Most people spoke as Americans first, although many people saw it through the lens of Israel," Schwartzman said of discussions among her temple members.
It's a worry Democrats are mining.
"Our friends in the Middle East, including most prominently Israel, have been placed in greater danger because of the policy blunders and sheer incompetence with which the civilian Pentagon officials have conducted this war," former Vice President Al Gore told the liberal group Move-On in Washington on Oct. 18.
It's a message that resonates with some American Jews.
Eleanne Hattis, a self-described "hyperliberal" from New York, explains her brief support just after Saddam's regime was ousted, and her opposition to it now, in terms of her closeness to Israel.
"When we went in it was so swift, I was relieved. I thought, 'Thank God, it could have been much worse, maybe this could change the dynamic in the Middle East, Saddam being gone could be a shift to the better,'" said Hattis, 35, a marketing consultant.
Instead, she said, "it's deteriorating rapidly, the world loathes Israel, the right wing conservatives' alignment with Israel makes me cringe, and it drags us down further."
Of course, Jews also were concerned that an over-extended military might necessitate a return to a national draft, despite Bush administration assurances to the contrary.
A former AIPAC board member, Berkley the U.S. representative, recalls asking Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney before the war how Israel would factor into any invasion plan.
"The vice president explained in great detail at that meeting in the White House that they knew exactly where the weapons of mass destruction were located in Iraq that were aimed at Israel, and he assured me that when we went in, those missiles would be the first that the United States takes out," she said. "In retrospect, this administration had absolutely no idea what we were getting into."
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