ANTI-BIBI page 116

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state whose vast promise as a
light unto the nations is sapped
by endless occupation, rebellion
and terrorism.
These groups have nowhere to
go except further to the ideologi-
cal fringes no matter what Mr.
Netanyahu decides in the days
and weeks ahead, because their
vision of the Middle East is so far
out of sync with the views of most
American Jews.
The problem facing leaders on
the left is that they oversold Oslo
and oversold Mr. Arafat's alleged
transformation from terrorist to
statesman. Now, they are scram-
bling for credibility.
After Oslo, pro-peace process
groups fought hard for aid to the
PLO leader and, following the
lead of the Rabin-Peres govern-
ments, downplayed the impor-
tance of Palestinian compliance
in U.S. policy. They dismissed as
insignificant the controversy over
whether the Palestinians had ful-
filled the requirement that they
change their charter, they ignored
evidence that the Palestinian po-
lice force almost instantly became
a bloated quasi-army.
Give Arafat a chance to deal
with his restive constituents, they
pleaded; don't judge him by his
speeches in Arabic calling for ji-
had (an Islamic holy war).
In recent weeks, to their cred-
it, groups such as Americans for
Peace Now have criticized Mr.
Arafat, and insisted he must
change his behavior if the peace
process is to survive.
Still, groups on the Jewish left
have failed to explain exactly how
Israel can have faith in peace
agreements with a man who
seems to sow mistrust at every
turn.
They have problems explain-
ing exactly how the negotiations
can succeed in a real world in
which even the most central ques-
tions — such as whether Mr.
Arafat is genuinely willing to for-

Looking For
A Good Word

The recent Mideast violence has set back Israel's
public relations gains of late.

LARRY DERFNER ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT

enever Israel has been
in the international dog-
house, such as during
the Lebanon War and
the intifada, the argument has
been made that the problem is
poor hasbara, or political public
relations.
Critics assert that if Israeli lead-
ers did a better job of explaining
the justice and wisdom of their
policies, the world, or at least the
Western world, would understand
Israel's side.

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go his dreams of a greater Pales-
tine stretching to the sea — are
unanswerable.
They have been silent on what
happens next if the gradualism of
the Oslo accords proves unwork-
able, and they have understand-
ably shied away from the
explosive question of Jerusalem.
And then there are the Jews in
the middle — increasingly de-
tached from Israel, disturbed by
the undiminished passions in the
Middle East and turned off by
what many see as the simplistic
answers of partisans in the great
peace process debate.
The right addresses their dark-
est fears and suspicions, but
American Jews no longer respond
reflexively to pleas to circle the
Jewish wagons. Many simply find
it difficult to swallow the idea that
Israel isn't strong enough to make
peace with its neighbors.
In recent years, the left spoke
to their hopes, but they did so in
a way that seemed naive as Mr.
Arafat's two-faced approach to the
negotiations became impossible
to ignore.
American Jews aren't stupid;
they realize that few partisans in
the battle over the Middle East
peace process offer logical, realis-
tic visions of how peace negotia-
tions might take us from today's
climate of violence and pervasive
mistrust to some future era of
peace.
All of that comes at a time of
seething resentment in Reform
and Conservative circles — a ma-
jority of American Jews — over
the pluralism battle taking place
in Israel.
The results are likely to be an
accelerated detachment from Is-
rael by the mass of American Jew-
ish in the middle, and a dangerous
diminution in political support for
a pro-Israel cause that seems to
hover over the ideological poles.

That's again the case as Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
seems on the rocks with the world
media. Apparently the recent
summit in Washington with Pres-
ident Clinton didn't help.
In act, "It left in its wake a rup-
ture between the two leaders [and]
the two governments," wrote
Yediot Achronot's Nahum Barnea,
Israel's most prominent newspa-
per columnist, after interviewing

A GOOD WORD page 120

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