INSIDE WASHINGTON JAMES D. BESSER Washington Correspondent F our months ago, Wash- ington was abuzz with talk about cuts in for- eign aid — and in particular, aid to Israel, the leading recipient of American dollars. Now, with Saddam Hus- sein threatening the Persian Gulf region and American troops digging into the Saudi deserts, Israeli officials think the time might be right to ask for an increase in aid for the next budget year. But congressional sources suggested that the Israelis may be in for a tough fight. - "Sympathy for Israel is one thing," said a top aide to Joseph Lieberman: Too early to tell. a Jewish congressman. "There's no question that many people up here are de- veloping a new appreciation for the problems that Israel faces. But the foreign aid question this year is almost entirely budget driven; the only real threat to aid to Israel at the current levels has come from people con- cerned about the deficit." Those sentiments were echoed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), one of Israel's most articulate sup- porters on Capitol Hill. "It's too early to say what will happen if they request more aid," Sen. Lieberman said. "But it's problematic because of the budget, and because of this sense that we now have more varied inter- ests in the region." ADL Takes Poll Results Straight To Israel With the U.S.-Israeli rela- tionship in a state of flux, polls documenting changing patterns of support for Israel are a particularly important topic these days. So when word began to spread in Jewish circles that a poll commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League showed some disturbing slippage, there was a fran- Abe Foxman: Low profile paid off. tic quest to obtain clandes- tine copies of the report, and to draw portraits of an ADL conspiracy to suppress the data. But ADL was playing its own game Instead of releas- ing the data, the group's leaders took their informa- tion directly to Israel's leaders. "We were not interested in making a big story out of this, or a big splash," said Abe Foxman, the group's ex- ecutive director. "That's one reason we were very suc- cessful." In a visit early this month, the ADL group met with a wide range of leaders. "It was a good experience," Mr. Foxman said. "People listened and cared, from the prime minister on down. We didn't come to them telling them what to do; we simply told them what our polls showed, so they could factor in that information when they made decisions." The delegation received a less enthusiastic reception from the Jerusalem Post, which blasted the group for joining the "blame Israel chorus." The Post editorial was based on leaks about the poll's results. The poll, which was con- ducted in June — well before Saddam Hussein reshuffled the Middle East deck — showed a sharp increase in support for the Palestinian cause. For the first time, more than 50 percent of Americans supported the es- tablishment of a Palestinian homeland. The polling data was simi- lar to results of a New York Times/CBS poll released ear- ly this month. But a poll commissioned by the Ameri- can Jewish Committee — again, well before the Iraqi assault on Kuwait — in- dicated growing support for Israel among the American public. The bottom line for deci- sion makers in Washington is that public opinion re- mains highly volatile with respect to the Middle East — and that even though the Persian Gulf situation has diverted attention from the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, the longterm results of the growing face-off with Iraq will only serve to increase that volatility. Holocaust Museum Gains Archive Access It's been a productive summer for the people at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Recently, the Holocaust Memorial Council signed agreements with the governments of Rumania and Bulgaria providing access to long-buried ar- chives. According to Michael Berenbaum, the museum di- rector, the agreements mean that every Eastern Euro- pean nation with the excep- tion of Albania has now signed agreements pro- viding the Council with access to World War 11 ar- chives. Mr. Berenbaum suggested that the Bulgarian archives, in particular, would provide a treasure trove for Holo- caust researchers. "The Bulgarians saved their own Jewish popula- tion," he said. "But they killed non-Bulgarian Jews. It was one of the ironies of the Holocaust, and it tells us that the whole notion of `righteous gentiles' is more complex than we usually think." Quake Predictors May Augur Jewish President The 1990 off-year elections are still a few months away, but already political en- thusiasts are actively speculating about the 1992 presidential contest. And one man who thinks he has the key to the next presidential sweepstakes is a Jewish historian in Wash- ington. Allan J. Lichtman, a pro- fessor at the American Uni- versity, has devised a com- plex system for predicting the outcome of presidential elections that, he says, is almost infallible. And, strangely enough, Mr. Lichtman's system — which is featured in his new book, The 13 Keys to the Presidency— is based on the science of earthquake prediction. "It was developed through an accidental meeting bet- ween myself and the Soviet geophysicist, Volodia I. Keilis-Borok," Mr. Lichtman said in a recent interview. "He had de- veloped mathematical systems of earthquake prediction. We developed the idea that we could use simi- lar processes to look at polit- ical relationships." In earthquake prediction, Mr. Lichtman said, scien- tists study the visible signs of unseen geophysical upheaval. They look for pat- terns that help them decipher the characteristics of the physical environment associated with earth- quakes. Mr. Lichtman applied a similar process to the pat- terns that help predict elec- tion results. "We studied every election since 1860," he said. "Eventually, we were able to identify 13 keys —simple yes-no questions that estab- lish whether the conditions favor the party in power or not." Those keys include in- cumbency, whether or not there is a serious contest for the nomination, third-party challenges and the state of the economy. One interesting outcome of Mr. Lichtman's predictions involves the possibility of a Jewish president. The con- ventional wisdom still sug- gests that a Jew could not be elected, a prediction not supported by Mr. Lichtman's system. "According to the keys, there could be a Jewish pres- ident," he said. "What the keys tell is that what's im- portant is the state of the country at the time of the election. If there's a percep- tion that the country is in trouble, and the challenger is Jewish, this system shows that the challenger would probably win." Iraqi Invasion Alters Interfaith Relations The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait may have a positive impact on interfaith rela- tions, according to a spe- cialist in the ticklish area of relations between Christian groups and Jews. According to Rabbi James Rudin, director of inter- religious affairs for the American Jewish Com- mittee, the Iraqi invasion has altered the perspective of church groups that have tended to take a critical view of lsrgel. "Tnz Iraqi invasion was like a flash of lightning, clearing the air and illumi- nating the terrain," he said. "One thing it's illuminated are the points we've been making all along about Saddam Hussein, about the dangers facing Israel. Se- cond, it's illuminated the fact that while the Palestin- ian issue must be solved, it is not the primary cause of in- stability in the region." Church groups, too, tended to criticize American intervention in the Middle East. "In certain church quarters, there's been a tendency to portray us as the `heavy' on the block," Rabbi Rudin said. "But now it's clear that this country worked effectively." The Palestinian issue will not go away, he cautioned. But even when it returns to center stage the terms of the debate will be changed. "When the Palestinian question comes back as a central motif, it will come back in a different way. It will no longer be 'if only Israel does this or that.' What's clear* to everybody now is what we've been say- ing all along: it's an ugly, dir- ty neighborhood. It's not like sharing a border with Canada." 111 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 33 ATIO N A Will Congress Increase Aid To Israel Now?