Israel.
AIPAC’s success has excited dark conjecture about a Jewishconspiracy on the part of anti-Semites, causing some Jews to fear the lobby’s high profile. But Dine, who was born and raised in Cincinnati, is far too confident to be intimidated by such fears.
“American Jews are American citizens, and American citizens have the right to organize, express opinions, and take part in the political process of their country. There’s nothing wrong with that,” he told me. “The secret of our success is organization and hard work. You ought to go out in the field and see for yourself.”
This kind of self-assurance is relatively new for American Jews. A generation ago they were still political outsiders and the American-Israeli relationship was far from intimate. During the Suez Crisis, for example, President Eisenhower not only threatened Israel, but he refused to discuss the issue with American Jewish leaders (his biographer, Stephen Ambrose, attributed this to Ike’s dislike of Jews). Even John F. Kennedy, whose party had a strong Jewish component, declined to allow Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to pay a state visit to Washington, preferring to meet with him in New York.
The Six-Day War was a turning point for Jewish involvement in American politics. The threat to Israel’s survival galvanized Jews around a national issue. Just as important, the Jewish community had outgrown its immigrant jitters; by 1967, most Jews felt sufficiently self-confident to speak out, something they had failed to do a generation earlier when Franklin Roosevelt charmed and bullied Jewish leaders into silence about the Holocaust.
The year nineteen hundred and sixty-seven also marked the beginning of AIPAC’s transformation from a small, marginal political group into a powerful Washington lobby. Lyndon Johnson was a sympathetic president (his administration was the first to sell Israel sophisticated weapons) and Israel was widely admired in America for its military victory. AIPAC’s growth accelerated once again in 1973, as a result of the Yom Kippur War and the Arab oil boycott. By the 1980s the Reagan administration’s pro-Israel policies, Israel’s high standing in American public opinion, and Dine’s astute leadership combined to make AIPAC one of the nation’s most effective political machines.
The emergence of Jewish political power in America has more than one cause. The United States is a more tolerant and pluralisticcountry than it was under FDR or Eisenhower. The Holocaust taught American Jews the price of political impotence. And last but by no means least, Israel has proved an ideal issue—the country is pro-American, widely admired by non-Jews, and emotionally compelling for the Jewish mainstream. There may be occasional distress over Israeli policy, such as in the West Bank and Gaza; but basically, there is no downside to support for Israel in America.
In many ways, politics in a democracy are a mirror of society, and talking to Tom Dine on the patio of the King David, it occurred to me that AIPAC could provide an interesting view of the American Jewish state of mind. I was curious to know how Jews talked to each other about issues, how they perceived their interests, and how they pursued them. Of course I knew the basics—most Jews support Israel and tend to be liberal Democrats on domestic issues. What I wanted was to get a feel for Jewish politics at the grass roots level. An AIPAC Jew hunt seemed like a good place to start—which is how I wound up in Moline, at the Stardust Motel, in the middle of October.
The Stardust is a kind of Big Ten Versailles, with marble pillars in the lobby and bogus Greek statuary in the parking lot—not Tom Dine’s kind of place at all. When I arrived, I found Lori Posin in a private room, conducting a working dinner with fifteen or so middle-aged people. The seventh game of the World Series was on television that night and another Jewish organization might have been
AIPAC’s success has excited dark conjecture about a Jewishconspiracy on the part of anti-Semites, causing some Jews to fear the lobby’s high profile. But Dine, who was born and raised in Cincinnati, is far too confident to be intimidated by such fears.
“American Jews are American citizens, and American citizens have the right to organize, express opinions, and take part in the political process of their country. There’s nothing wrong with that,” he told me. “The secret of our success is organization and hard work. You ought to go out in the field and see for yourself.”
This kind of self-assurance is relatively new for American Jews. A generation ago they were still political outsiders and the American-Israeli relationship was far from intimate. During the Suez Crisis, for example, President Eisenhower not only threatened Israel, but he refused to discuss the issue with American Jewish leaders (his biographer, Stephen Ambrose, attributed this to Ike’s dislike of Jews). Even John F. Kennedy, whose party had a strong Jewish component, declined to allow Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to pay a state visit to Washington, preferring to meet with him in New York.
The Six-Day War was a turning point for Jewish involvement in American politics. The threat to Israel’s survival galvanized Jews around a national issue. Just as important, the Jewish community had outgrown its immigrant jitters; by 1967, most Jews felt sufficiently self-confident to speak out, something they had failed to do a generation earlier when Franklin Roosevelt charmed and bullied Jewish leaders into silence about the Holocaust.
The year nineteen hundred and sixty-seven also marked the beginning of AIPAC’s transformation from a small, marginal political group into a powerful Washington lobby. Lyndon Johnson was a sympathetic president (his administration was the first to sell Israel sophisticated weapons) and Israel was widely admired in America for its military victory. AIPAC’s growth accelerated once again in 1973, as a result of the Yom Kippur War and the Arab oil boycott. By the 1980s the Reagan administration’s pro-Israel policies, Israel’s high standing in American public opinion, and Dine’s astute leadership combined to make AIPAC one of the nation’s most effective political machines.
The emergence of Jewish political power in America has more than one cause. The United States is a more tolerant and pluralisticcountry than it was under FDR or Eisenhower. The Holocaust taught American Jews the price of political impotence. And last but by no means least, Israel has proved an ideal issue—the country is pro-American, widely admired by non-Jews, and emotionally compelling for the Jewish mainstream. There may be occasional distress over Israeli policy, such as in the West Bank and Gaza; but basically, there is no downside to support for Israel in America.
In many ways, politics in a democracy are a mirror of society, and talking to Tom Dine on the patio of the King David, it occurred to me that AIPAC could provide an interesting view of the American Jewish state of mind. I was curious to know how Jews talked to each other about issues, how they perceived their interests, and how they pursued them. Of course I knew the basics—most Jews support Israel and tend to be liberal Democrats on domestic issues. What I wanted was to get a feel for Jewish politics at the grass roots level. An AIPAC Jew hunt seemed like a good place to start—which is how I wound up in Moline, at the Stardust Motel, in the middle of October.
The Stardust is a kind of Big Ten Versailles, with marble pillars in the lobby and bogus Greek statuary in the parking lot—not Tom Dine’s kind of place at all. When I arrived, I found Lori Posin in a private room, conducting a working dinner with fifteen or so middle-aged people. The seventh game of the World Series was on television that night and another Jewish organization might have been
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