Israel's Friend in the White House
BARNES, FRED
Israel's Friend in the White House Surprise, it's George W Bush. BY FRED BARNES ON APRIL 19, President Bush traveled to the Capitol to deliver what was supposed to be a routine speech. The...
...Bush's relationship with Sharon is warm...
...The Egyptian president was told he hadn't done enough to restrain Arafat and contain Palestinian violence against Israel...
...Bush still talks vividly about Israel's security problems...
...He was urged to join with other Arab leaders and pressure Arafat...
...And while he and Sharon aren't close friends, Bush has been "impressed" by him, according to a White House official...
...It was really an extraordinary experience," says an aide whom Bush briefed later...
...The president has pointedly not invited Arafat to the White House, but Sharon was the first visitor from the Middle East, ahead of both President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah II of Jordan...
...It wasn't about me," Bush later told an aide...
...When Israel retaliated against Syrian military sites in Lebanon, the White House blamed Hezbollah, not Israel, for the incident...
...He also "came back understanding with absolute clarity Israel's precarious security situation, strategically, geographically, militarily, and politically," the aide said...
...Bush's speech lasted only a few minutes, but it had two noteworthy sentences in which he linked Jewish "defiance and oppression" from the Exodus and the Holocaust to the defense of Israel today...
...At a dinner on the final day of his trip, a member of Bush's group recited a psalm from memory...
...Bush has talked to Sharon by phone at least three times...
...Certainly Bush tilts in Israel's favor far more than his father or Bill Clinton when they were president...
...Sharon was one of the few foreign leaders Bush knew when he became president...
...But one of the encouraging signs, from Israel's viewpoint, was the visit to the White House by Mubarak...
...minister Yitzhak Shamir and treated Israel as the chief impediment to peace in the Middle East...
...Bush has frequently recounted episodes from the trip, including to aides since he became president...
...He quickly repudiated the proposals, mostly concessions by Israel, that Clinton had advanced in peace talks...
...The State Department advised Bush not to fly with Sharon over the West Bank, but he went anyway...
...Clinton pressured Israel to make sweeping concessions to the Palestinians and seldom criticized their leader, Yasser Arafat...
...That story continues in the defense of the state of Israel...
...It ended with a reference to "Jew and Gentile, hand in hand...
...Is Bush really pro-Israel...
...His expression of that sentiment was taken as perfectly natural, and that's the point...
...That trip played a large role in creating Bush's friendly attitude toward Israel...
...Bush has taken one important step and several smaller ones to aid Israel...
...True, the sentiment that Israel's existence and defense are related to the peril of Jews in the 1930s and 1940s may be common among Israelis and supporters of Israel...
...It was about America...
...He said this was "a signal" that Arafat should hear "loud and clear...
...But this was a Republican president named Bush...
...What all this adds up to, for the moment at least, is the most pro-Israel president since Ronald Reagan...
...A pro-Israel comment, or action, by Bush is now unremarkable...
...It's too early to know exactly how this will play out over Bush's term...
...Bush senior disliked and distrusted Israeli prime Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...He accepted the policy of Sharon that violence against Israel must cease before talks resume...
...When he went to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a small crowd yelled "Bush, Bush, Bush" as he departed...
...Sharon took him on a helicopter ride over Israel when Bush and a group of Republicans toured the country in December 1998...
...Mubarak didn't react kindly to the advice...
...But he may have to get used to it...
...To punctuate that, Bush declared at a March 29 press conference that Arafat should "stop the violence...
...Yet practically no one in the media took notice...
...Bush junior and the current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, get along well...
...Bush didn't appear to know himself...
...Nor did Bush's speech-writers realize they'd put historic words in the president's mouth...
...He has been reluctant to lean on Israel and has said he won't attempt to "force a peace settlement in the Middle East...
...Bush has zinged Arafat both privately and publicly for spurning a peace settlement with Israel and for promoting violence...
...Bush found Israel to be a "deeply religious" country...
...At the U.N., the United States vetoed an anti-Israel resolution in the Security Council for the first time in five years and voted against another before the U.N...
...The occasion was the Days of Remembrance, an annual observance to recall the Holocaust and its victims...
...The lone criticism of Israel came from Secretary of State Colin Powell after Israel sent troops into Gaza to attack Palestinian mortars...
...I represented America to them...
...This was the first time a president had made the connection between the survival of Israel and the Holocaust...
...Mike Gerson, the president's top speechwriter, thinks he is...
...Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist, says he is...
...In any case, Bush was touched...
...That [Jewish] story continued in the founding of the state of Israel," he said...
...Human Rights Commission in Geneva...
Vol. 6 • May 2001 • No. 32
