Carter, the World and the Jews

More than any past President, Jimmy Carter has committed the prestige of his office to a Middle East settlement. While he has raised Arab hopes--perhaps to an unrealistic level--he has also aroused distrust and anger in Israel and among many of its fervent supporters in the U.S. The significance of the issue reaches beyond domestic politics and even beyond the Middle East itself, for it illustrates the weaknesses of Carter's approach to world affairs generally: too public and too often contradictory.

Many American Jews had deep misgivings initially about Carter, a Southern Baptist with few ties to the Jewish community. He stilled doubts by asserting that Israel should maintain control of the Golan Heights and Jewish and Christian places of worship in Jerusalem. He also pledged to continue military aid, and he promised to wage an "economic war" against the Arab states if they imposed another oil embargo.

Disillusionment began only a month after Carter's inauguration, when, during Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's visit to the Middle East, the U.S. announced that it would bar sales to other countries of Israel's Kfir jets with American-built engines. The White House also canceled a shipment of concussion bombs promised to Israel by the Ford Administration. Vance came home convinced that the Arabs were more flexible than the Israelis, and he said so. In meetings with Middle East leaders, Carter got on famously with Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, Jordan's King Hussein, Syria's President Hafez Assad and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Fahd --but not at all well with Israel's then Premier, Yitzhak Rabin. Then the President alarmed Jews when he called for a homeland for Palestinians, suggested that Israel withdraw from almost all of the territory it had seized in the 1967 Six-Day War, and asked for reparations for displaced Arabs--a demand that even Arab leaders have not made.

Actually these points are sensible and have been raised by previous Administrations, mostly in private. No Middle East peace is possible without at least a start toward resettling the Palestinians, but the word "homeland" raises confusion over whether Carter means a sovereign state or a territory affiliated with Jordan. It is also obvious that no peace is possible unless Israel gives up most of the occupied territories, including the West Bank. But there are many possible ways for this to come about, and Carter's pronouncement seems both premature and imprecise.

U.S. Jews are hardly unanimous in their criticisms. Some are afraid that the new ultranationalist Premier-designate Menachem Begin--who will visit Washington next month--may make a settlement all the harder to achieve. Despite their growing unease with Carter, many Jews are still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Says Max Palevsky, a top Los Angeles Democratic Party fund raiser: "There haven't been enough attempts at moderation, and any prodding in that direction by Carter, anything that gets movement, is all to the good." But the critics are more numerous and more impassioned. Recalling that an estimated 65% of the Jewish vote went to Carter, Ford supporter Rabbi Seymour Siegel of the Jewish Theological Seminary notes: "If Carter had said in October what he has been saying this spring, he would not be in the White House. Enough Jews would have voted for Ford to swing New York and perhaps a few other states."

Jewish leaders fear that their cause is not being properly represented. Middle East diplomacy, they complain, is in the hands of National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and his assistant William Quandt, a specialist in Palestinian affairs. Brzezinski is thought to be pro-Arab--perhaps unfairly--by some supporters of Israel because he was one of the authors of a 1975 Brookings report calling for Israel's withdrawal to its 1967 borders. The two Jewish aides closest to Carter, Domestic Policy Assistant Stuart Eizenstat and White House Counsel Robert Lipshutz, are not considered sufficiently attuned to the Jewish community.

Last week the Jewish opposition began to mobilize. A list of 21 grievances against the Carter Administration was circulated on Capitol Hill. The White

House meanwhile was barraged with letters. Says Samuel Kaplan, board member of the Zionist Organization of America: "People thought they had seen a Jewish lobby operate before. They haven't seen anything yet."

The White House had seen enough and sprang into action. Carter, who had earlier put his chief political fixer, Hamilton Jordan, in charge of Jewish issues, invited key Senators to breakfast to discuss the Middle East. Vice President Walter Mondale was sent to San Francisco to deliver a foreign policy address on the Middle East, stressing the fact that Israel would not be asked to withdraw from its occupied territories until it was assured of "real peace." The President spent 40 minutes with visiting Israeli Rabbi Shlomo Goren. Carter told Goren that he did not expect Israel to return completely to its 1967 borders, that he did not seek an independent Palestinian state but one affiliated with Jordan, and that reparations were desirable for displaced Jews as well as Arabs.

Carter's strained relationship with the Jewish community is not beyond repair. Says Rabbi Alexander Schindler, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations: "There is apprehension. But there is no confrontation yet. In fact, there is gratitude and satisfaction with some aspects of Administration policy." Jewish leaders applaud Carter's strong stand on Soviet dissidents, on free emigration from Russia, on the antiboycott legislation. Carter has also increased economic aid to Israel by $400 million. Growing doubts have apparently not caused Jewish leaders to tighten their purse strings. Tickets are selling briskly for a $1,000-a-plate Salute to the President dinner to be held this week in New York City's Waldorf Astoria.

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