Israel Crisis of Conscience

By Thomas A. Sancton

For 40 years Israel has been not just a country but an idea: a symbol of moral strength, an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarian Arab states and a testament to the righting of wrongs that had been visited upon the Jewish people. Perhaps for that reason, Israel last week found itself subjected to moral censure from many of its strongest foreign supporters, and even some of its own citizens. The reason: a continuing military crackdown against a two- month-old Palestinian uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Israeli troops had responded to rock-throwing youths first with bullets and then with brutal, seemingly indiscriminate beatings.

Nowhere was the sense of consternation stronger than in the U.S., where financial and political support from the 5.7 million-strong Jewish community is vitally important to Israel's survival. A number of American Jewish leaders were openly critical of the army crackdown, and U.S. opinion -- in normal times firmly supportive of Israeli policy -- was starting to diverge from that pattern. In a U.S. poll taken for TIME last week by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman, 57% of the Jewish respondents and 72% of the non-Jews said they disapproved of the use of force and beatings. Additionally, 77% of the Jews and 65% of the non-Jews felt that the clashes were hurting Israel's image in the U.S. (see box).

Against this backdrop of American concern and Palestinian unrest, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak arrived in the U.S. last week with a plan for getting the stalled Middle East peace process back on track. The West Bank and Gaza uprisings, said Mubarak, had given special urgency to the quest for regionwide stability. "The situation is on fire," he told TIME shortly before departing . for Washington. "The United States should do something for the peace process. It takes a great effort for peace to prevail, but these tensions could lead to great instability in the area."

The centerpiece of Mubarak's plan is a six-month cooling-off period, during which the Palestinians would desist from rioting and the Israelis would halt the building of new Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Once that moratorium was in place, according to the proposal, an international Middle East peace conference would be convened.

Mubarak was well placed to act as a mediator. He is the only Arab leader who can deal directly with Israel. His country enjoys close ties with the U.S. and steadily improving relations with the Soviet Union. Egypt's recent reintegration into the Arab League has bolstered its influence with Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization, two key parties to an eventual solution. The plan, however, faced a major obstacle: although Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres supported the idea of an international conference, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir once again adamantly opposed it as a "trap" and rejected Mubarak's proposal out of hand.

The Egyptian leader nonetheless hoped that U.S. pressure could ultimately persuade the Israelis to cooperate. Mubarak pitched hard for his peace plan in separate meetings with Secretary of State George Shultz, President Reagan and U.S. congressional leaders. Reagan pronounced the idea of a six-month cool- down period "sensible" and indicated a willingness to pursue Mubarak's proposals with Israel and Jordan. In another sign of movement on the peace front, Shultz met earlier in the week with two moderate Palestinian leaders: Hanna Siniora, editor of the East Jerusalem daily Al Fajr, and Fayez Abu Rahme, a prominent Gaza attorney.

Thus while Mubarak's visit produced no tangible results, it did bring some activity and discussion to the long-dormant peace process. Where that might lead remained to be seen, but U.S. officials were not optimistic. Said a State Department analyst: "We can cajole and we can encourage, but the major players have to get together and decide that they want to talk. So far, we just don't see any evidence that there is a will to do that."

The search for a political solution, in fact, seemed far removed from the continuing violence in the occupied territories. In the two weeks after Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin first publicly announced the policy of "force, strength and blows" to put down the demonstrations, hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children have been clubbed and battered by Israeli soldiers. The apparent aim was not just to punish specific troublemakers but to terrorize the population into submission. Said Shamir: "Our task now is to re-create the barrier of fear between Palestinians and the Israeli military, and once again put the fear of death into the Arabs of the areas so as to deter them from attacking us anymore." Until a renewed outburst of protests in the West Bank and Gaza at week's end that, according to Arab sources, left 15 injured by live ammunition as well as rubber bullets, the policy had brought a measure of uneasy calm to the occupied territories. Rabin might well argue that broken bones are preferable to the 38 deaths that occurred before he announced he was replacing bullets with beatings. But the change in policy has further tarnished Israel's image abroad.

American Jewish leaders, normally reluctant to criticize Israeli government policy in times of crisis, last week issued a barrage of condemnations. Reform Rabbi Alexander Schindler, President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, sent a scathing letter to Israeli President Chaim Herzog, calling the beatings an "offense to the Jewish spirit" that "violates every principle of human decency and betrays the Zionist dream." Declared Bert Gold, executive vice president of the American Jewish Committee: "Using brute force evokes other times and places when it was used against us." Said Balfour Brickner, senior rabbi of Manhattan's Stephen Wise Free Synagogue: "When the Israelis become like their enemy, they are no different from their enemy." "We read with shame," wrote four Jewish intellectuals in a letter to the New York Times, "reports of house to house beatings of hundreds of people, leading to broken bones and hospitalization of the aged and children." The letter was signed by Author Irving Howe; Economist Henry Rosovsky, a former Harvard dean; Princeton Political Scientist Michael Walzer; and Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg.

As always, American Jewish leaders were obliged to walk a fine line between criticizing specific Israeli policies while continuing to support the Jewish state. "While we may be critical," said Rabbi Schindler, "anything we say is also bound to be used by Israel's enemies. We are reluctant to give them ammunition. It is a conflict within each Jew." Underscoring that reflexive sense of solidarity, Morris Abram, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, called a press conference at midweek to declare that his group offered its unequivocal support for Israeli policy in the occupied territories. Abram also read a telegram from Shamir stating that his government had never endorsed a policy of "indiscriminate" beatings.

The consternation of U.S. Jewish leaders was widely shared by individual American Jews. Said Filmmaker Woody Allen in a mocking article published on the New York Times' op-ed page: "I mean, fellas, are you kidding? Beatings of people by soldiers to make examples of them? Breaking the hands of men and women so they can't throw stones?" Protested Elaine W. Charny, 52, of Jenkintown, Pa.: "This goes against my morals and what Israel has always tried to be, which is more moral. To see Israelis oppressing others is what's really tearing at us."

In the face of strong public opposition to the beatings, there are faint signs that the traditional reluctance of U.S. politicians to criticize Israel may be diminishing. So far, the Administration has not wavered in its public support of Israel. On the presidential campaign trail, however, although Israeli policy has not become a significant issue, several candidates have called the crackdown excessive. "I think Israel is wrong, and I'm willing to say it," said Gary Hart during a Democratic candidates' debate in Boston last week. "I think all of the rest of us should be willing to say that because we're Israel's friends."

There are also increasing grumblings in Congress and occasional hints that the $3 billion annual U.S. aid package to Israel might be reduced if the repression continues. "I think they're losing popular support in this country today," conceded House Majority Whip Tony Coelho, a staunch supporter of Israel. The California Democrat cautioned against threatening Israel with financial or political reprisals: "I don't think you ever use the threat of a sledgehammer with a friend." On the other hand, Michigan Democrat David Bonior, the House chief deputy majority whip, had no such qualms. Said he: "I think a good couple of whacks on the head with a sledgehammer are in order."

Israeli officials reacted with indignation to criticism from abroad and blamed alleged "distortions" by the press for the country's image problems. "What do you see as an alternative?" demanded President Herzog in + response to Rabbi Schindler's stinging cable. "The alternative facing us today . . . is between suppressing these riots or allowing them to develop into a new Tehran or Beirut." Declared Shamir: "We are not allowed to kill; we are not allowed to expel; we are not allowed to beat. You ask yourself what we are allowed to do. Only to be killed, only to be wounded, only to be defeated." Nothing has irked the government more than the analogy, increasingly cited by its critics, between Israel's security policy and that of South Africa. On the surface, there are some striking similarities. Both governments exercise military control over subject populations. Both use those populations as sources of cheap menial labor. Both refuse to deal directly with the de facto political leaders of the subjugated groups -- the P.L.O. and the African National Congress respectively. And both have used lethal force to quell uprisings born of frustration and hopelessness.

The Israelis denounce the analogy as the product of an anti-Semitic propaganda campaign. They argue that, unlike South Africa, Israel does not discriminate racially, that Arabs within Israel enjoy the same rights as Jews, that Israeli troops have shown far greater restraint than the Afrikaners in putting down unrest. Says Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations: "Any of those comparisons to regimes which do not respect human rights but which employ violence without provocation is an invidious comparison." Netanyahu also asserts that Israeli soldiers are being unjustly criticized for reacting as any police force would in the face of violent demonstrations. Yet in its almost obsessive focus on such rebuttals, the government has failed to address the central issue behind the unrest: the status of the 1.4 million Palestinians living in Arab territories that Israel has occupied for the past 20 years.

Apart from some anguished outcries in the press and a Jan. 23 peace protest that brought out between 20,000 and 30,000 demonstrators in Tel Aviv, Israel has had to face relatively little internal criticism so far. Only a handful of national political figures have openly questioned Rabin's hard-line policy. Foremost among them is former Foreign Minister Abba Eban, a Labor member of the Knesset, who has called for an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The largest organized opposition to the government's policy comes from Peace Now, a group that sponsored the Jan. 23 Tel Aviv rally. Said Gaila ; Golan, one of the organizers: "People came not necessarily to support Palestinians but out of moral indignation. The feeling was, this isn't us. It can't be us. It can't be Jews doing this."

Most Israeli citizens, however, appear to accept the government's tough stance as a distasteful necessity. "I'm against the shootings and the beatings, but if there is no choice, there is no choice," shrugs Jerusalem Shop Owner Yermiyahu Levi, 53. Adds Uri Feinberg, a 16-year-old U.S.-born Jerusalem student: "The army had the choice of shooting people or beating them up. I think it's better to beat them up." According to a poll published by the daily Hadashot last week, 63% of the public fully supported the government's military policy, while another 27% found it too soft on the Palestinians.

Attempting to put a better face on the army's mission, Rabin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that there was no policy of "beating for beating's sake." Force was to be used, he said, only "against those acting violently." But Major General Amram Mitzna, the central front commander, admitted in a press conference that the "soldiers are not behaving as well as we had wished" and that "no more than a few" had been court-martialed for using excess force against the Palestinians. He added, somewhat apologetically, "It is confusing, not the policy and the orders, but this kind of mission, this kind of thing the soldiers have to do." It was indeed confusing, and many of Israel's best friends abroad were still struggling to make sense of a policy that seemed at odds with the country's noblest aspirations.

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CREDIT: TIME Chart

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DESCRIPTION: Opinions of Jews and non-Jews on several issues concerning Israel and Palestinians.

With reporting by Dean Fischer with Mubarak and Johanna McGeary/Jerusalem, with other bureaus