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Gershom Gorenberg: Dump Bush, Help Israel

Four more years of Bush�s �support� will be ruinous for Israel

The good news is that American Jews have not been possessed by a Republican dybbuk, despite the confident predictions of sundry GOP machers, despite the intifada and America�s post-9/11 seizures of jingoism. George W. Bush has not replaced FDR, Kennedy and Clinton in the American Jewish pantheon. Choosing today between Howard Dean and W., 60 percent would vote for the angry man from Vermont, next to just 31 percent for the Supreme Court-appointed incumbent. Other Democrats would produce about the same results, except for Joe Lieberman, whose home-tribe advantage would boost him to 71 percent.

Such are the results of the American Jewish Committee�s annual survey of Jewish opinion, based on a solid sample of 1,000 Jews with a margin of error of 3 percent. Someone else might rephrase the questions and get slightly different numbers, but even a butterfly ballot won�t produce the Jewish Republican revolution.

Here�s the bad news: Given that Joe Lieberman won�t be the candidate, Bush will still pick up 6 or 7 percent more of the Jewish votes than the 24 percent he received last time. The gain will put him in the league of Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon in their reelection campaigns. This isn�t a huge shift, but it matters -- because Jews actually vote, which lots of Americans seem to regard as pushy behavior, and because Jews live in the states that count. Reagan actually took New York in 1984, the last time a Republican did so, and if Bush does the same, that�s the election. Besides -- people don�t like to say this loudly -- Jews also give more to campaigns than other people do; by some estimates, they provide up to half of all Democratic donations. The Bush campaign doesn�t need that money, thank you, but the Democrats can�t afford to lose a cent of it.

I haven�t seen anyone suggest that a small but significant number of Jews have moved to Bush�s column because of his domestic policy. An intelligent minority anxiety remains strong. For instance, the same survey shows that nearly three-fourths of Jews oppose government funds for faith-based charities, a figure which translates as: Jews don�t like the Republican desire to make Christianity a government business.

No, if some Jews are nervously thinking about punching a chad-free Republican hole in their ballots, and doubting it, and mentally pulling their hands back, and deciding what the hell, yes, I�ll do it, and puke later, it�s because they think Bush is better for Israel. And this is precisely why I describe the shift as bad news, because I self-interestedly look at U.S. elections from Jerusalem. From here, the Bush presidency looks like a disaster.

Yes, Bush invites Ariel Sharon over for dinner, and does not invite Yasser Arafat, which is heartwarming. He speaks very supportively, and unlike Daddy, does not attack the Israel lobby. That�s about it. Indeed, the "Bush is good for Israel" argument comes down to Bush doing virtually nothing and letting Sharon act as he pleases. The argument assumes that neglect is benign.

Sporadically, Bush has made gestures that look like involvement. Early in his term, after noticing that European governments were trying to fill America�s empty place in Israeli-Palestinian mediation, Bush sent CIA chief George Tenet over to broker a cease-fire. Then he let the Tenet plan be placed in the library of forgotten peace plans. In June 2002, in an effort to show allies that Iraq wasn�t his only concern, Bush gave a poorly sewn-together policy speech on Mideast peace, and then avoided doing anything to implement that policy until after the Iraq war, when he dedicated a brief flurry of diplomacy to the road map and quickly abandoned the effort while the bombings began again here. At the tea party of Mideast diplomacy, Bush is the slumbering Dormouse, surrounded by Mad Hatters.

Meanwhile, the casualty figures have climbed, and we have slipped closer to the moment when Palestinians become a majority in Israeli-ruled territory. That is, the moment when Israel will face divestment campaigns and boycotts and European pressure aimed not at a two-state solution but a one-state solution, which is to say the end of the Jewish state.

For three years Israel has needed an American administration willing to lean on Arab clients to lean on Arafat, willing gracefully to lean on Sharon, willing to use the diplomatic heft that America alone has in the world to renew peace efforts. Instead, time has slipped away. The Bush administration doesn�t do diplomacy. It does invasions, and it can�t invade the Palestinian Authority to help Israel, because -- oops! -- Israel is in the way.

Four more years of Bush�s "support" will be ruinous for Israel. If you are sitting in Phoenix or Chicago, and you feel torn between loyalty to Israel and all your instinctive Jewish distaste for Bush�s domestic policies, stop feeling torn. Doing the right thing is easy. Vote against Bush. Write a check against Bush. Make a phone call to your friend Harry, who belongs to that 6-percent swing vote, and talk him into swinging back. Next November, Israel needs the same good news as America does.