Group to Candidates: Make Mideast Peace

New York Jewish Week
September 9, 2004

With the presidential campaigns now in high gear, Jewish groups that favor a much more active U.S. peacemaking role in the Middle East are taking their case to the two major-party candidates.

Americans for Peace Now and Brit Tzedek V’Shalom are spearheading an “open letter to the next president” signed by a broad range of Jewish luminaries.

The letter asks that whoever wins the Nov. 2 presidential contest appoint an “internationally respected envoy at the highest level” within the first 100 days of the new administration.

The goal: to help implement Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza disengagement plan and “renew negotiations leading to a final status accord.”

Signers include Ted Mann, former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; former congressman and White House counsel Judge Abner Mikva; Rabbi Amy Small, president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Assembly; Leonard Fein, a top Reform movement activist; and Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive vice-president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

“After four years of unrelenting violence and bloodletting, the current stalemate is unspeakably tragic for both peoples and serves as a lightning rod for international terrorism and threats to our nation’s security,” the letter writers wrote. “In the past, American presidents have succeeded in bringing about lasting peace agreements between Israel and her Arab neighbors. They did so by maintaining a steadfast commitment in the face of numerous obstacles.”

That can happen again, they said — but only with the kind of focused effort that critics say has been lacking in the past three and a half years.