Richard Melson

August 2004

The American Jewish Congress has been instrumental in promoting links and organizational ties between Israel and American at the Congressional level.

This tactic further cements the "Isra-America" stance against the Arab and Muslim worlds, no mattter how this is camouflaged by "gentility tricks."

See below:

Citizens Advisory Board Chairman's Report/Update (November 6, 2003)

In the aftermath of 9/11,and in view of ongoing terrorism in the Middle East, leading members of the Congress of the United States are organizing House and Senate caucuses on the subject of U.S./Israel Security Cooperation. The U.S./Israel Security Cooperation Congressional Caucuses will examine means for enhancing U.S. and Israeli defense and counter-terrorism preparedness in a changing and volatile global environment and will marshal Congressional support on this crucial subject. With the support and staff assistance of the American Jewish Congress, the Senate and House Caucuses will explore and promote programs, issues, and legislation to enhance this unique security cooperation relationship.

The respective Chairs of the bipartisan House and Senate Caucuses on U.S./ Israel Security Cooperation two Caucuses will be Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Congressmen Rob Andrews (D-NJ) and Jim Saxton (R-NJ). Other key Senators and Congressman who sit on the Appropriations, Armed Services, and Foreign/International Relations are being invited to participate as members of the Caucuses. (Please see biographical information of the Caucus leaders below.)

In a world characterized by instability, terrorism and growing non-conventional threats, U.S./Israel cooperation has taken on added meaning and urgency. As the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel has proven to be a reliable ally working with the United States in regional security matters. Israel also offers experience and lessons learned in law enforcement, intelligence, and military tactics and technologies that can be shared with America's expanding Office of Homeland Security. The American Jewish Congress believes that the time is right to further fortify the U.S./Israel alliance and views the Caucuses as an invaluable tool for doing so.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992 and is the first woman to serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She is the chair of the Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Government Information and a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence. As a member of these panels, Senator Feinstein works vigorously drafting legislation to fight terrorism. Senator Feinstein also serves on the Appropriations Committee where she chairs the Subcommittee on Military Construction.

Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1994, after having served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He currently sits on the Judiciary Committee, and is ranking member of the Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information. Senator Kyl holds many Republican Party positions, including the serving as Chairman of the Steering Committee and Deputy Senate Whip. Like Senator Feinstein, he also serves on the Select Committee on Intelligence.

Congressman Robert Andrews (D-NJ) is a 7th term Congressman representing the First Congressional District of New Jersey. He has spent his entire Congressional career serving on the House Education and Workforce Committee, where he is the ranking minority member of the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations. Congressman Andrews also sits on the important Armed Services Committee where he has been an outspoken protector of the United States' national defense.

Rep. Jim Saxton

Congressman Jim Saxton (R-NJ), has served in the U.S. House of Representatives for New Jersey's Third Congressional District since 1985. Currently in his 10th term, Rep. Saxton is a senior member of the House Armed Service Committee where he is the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities. Rep. Saxton is also the Vice-Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee and a Senior Member of the House Resources Committee.

Where We Stand

Now in its eighth decade, the American Jewish Congress is more than an organization. It is a movement—uniquely American—uniquely Jewish—deeply committed to a body of principles and a set of goals.

We believe that the Jews are one people—and we're dedicated to strengthening the ties that bind us at home and around the world. We believe in keeping faith with our Jewish heritage, applying its ethical and intellectual principles in our own land and our own time.

We are passionate participants in the battle to safeguard the Constitution of the United States. We believe that the welfare of the Jewish people is inseparably linked with the health of democracy. We fight against anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination, take part in the struggle to protect civil rights and civil liberties, work for the disadvantaged and the deprived, and defend democratic values against totalitarian threats from the left and the right.

As political activists, we reject both the politics of selfishness, and the politics of despair. We affirm our faith in the principles of social justice and in the abiding decency and compassion of the American people. We support legislation to increase the minimum wage, and to improve the lives of minorities, the elderly, the homeless, and victims of disease.

We support broadscale affirmative programs to assure equal opportunity in education, employment and housing, at the same time vigorously opposing quotas—for we do not condone redress achieved by exchanging new injustices for old.

We believe organized religion, including Judaism, flourishes in America because "church" and "state" are separate. In 1985, AJCongress established its Fund for Religious Liberty to ensure that they remain so.

AJCongress attorneys have initiated or participated in virtually every major test case affecting the religion clauses of the First Amendment to come before the United States Supreme Court. We have defended the constitutionality of kosher slaughter, protected Sabbath observers against discrimination in employment, challenged Sunday blue laws and forced changes in election and registration dates to ensure that the observant can participate fully in the democratic process. We helped draft the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and we argue in America 's courts against public school prayer, public funds for parochial schools, compulsory attendance at religious services and religious symbols on public property.

AJCongress' National Commission for Women's Equality pursues a feminist agenda within a Jewish context. The Commission is active in issues concerning health, the changing Jewish family, the portrayal of women in the media, and the empowerment of women in Jewish communal and political life.

Commitment to the State of Israel is fundamental to the American Jewish Congress. We have always believed that a strong, secure and democratic State of Israel is essential not only to the well-being of the Jewish people as a whole, but also to its creative continuity. As a result, we work tirelessly for the inalienable right of all Israelis to live with dignity and in peace.

Helping to find a way out of the festering Arab-Israel impasse—often challenging conventional wisdom—has long been a central focus of our endeavors. We've with Israel's leadership, with members of our own administration, and with Arab governments to ensure that we exhaust every opportunity open to American Jewry in the quest for peace, and to seek, suggest and transmit solutions. We've met with the King of Jordan, the King of Morocco, with Presidents of Egypt, and we've even been to Saudi Arabia, the first Jewish group ever invited to the Saudi Kingdom to listen, to talk and to counsel. We played a critical role in the post-Gulf War period by emphasizing to Arab governments that there could be no solution to the Middle East conflict without their unequivocal recognition of the State of Israel 's right to exist in security and peace.

We've commissioned studies, analyses and critiques of the various alternatives Israel faces in its quest for peace. The Options Project, commissioned by AJCongress from Israel's influential Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies and published in 1989, underscored the dangers both to Israel's democracy and its Jewishness inherent in the inevitable absorption of the West Bank and Gaza. This thoughtful report disregarded passions, polemics and zealotry, and introduced a new level of rationality and sophistication into the debate on the Arab-Israel conflict and is considered the peerless study on the subject. Its astute and creative recommendations helped pave the way for the precedent-shattering Gaza-Jericho agreement signed at the White House by Prime Minister Rabin and Yasir Arafat.

We play—and will continue to play—a central role in the fight against the Arab boycott of Israel. We were essential to the drafting of an effective federal anti-boycott bill. We monitor the law's enforcement by the Commerce Department, and our highly acclaimed monthly newsletter Boycott Report provides subscribers with a constant review of developments affecting the boycott.

In order to assist Israel in promoting an improved public image, AJCongress' Hasbara Interns' Project, initiated in 1984, brings Israeli diplomats to the United States for intensive training in communications and public relations techniques.

AJCongress' annual spring Jerusalem Conference of Mayors, first organized in 1980, brings dozen of important elected officials from the U.S. and around the world to Israel. These key opinion makers develop an understanding of Israel 's commitment to democracy, its security concerns and the critical importance of an undivided Jerusalem.

Inside Israel, a newsletter published weekly by AJCongress' Israel office and containing invaluable and fascinating analysis and insight into Israel 's political scene, is distributed to AJCongress' top leadership and, on occasion, to the entire American Jewish leadership. The Louis Waterman Wise Youth Hostel in Jerusalem—founded in 1954 and named for the wife of Rabbi Stephen Wise—is Israel's largest youth hostel, drawing international youth to Jerusalem. The hostel also mounts training programs for new Israelis and brings together young Jewish, Moslem, Christian and Druze Israelis in meaningful contact.

Ever since 1962, AJCongress' annual America-Israel Dialogues have brought American Jewish leaders and American and Israeli academics together to participate in an engrossing and fruitful intellectual symposium examining facets of the ties that bind the two communities.

AJCongress fights for the freedom and welfare of Jews wherever in the world these rights are endangered. Having played a central role in the fight to free Soviet Jews, we still maintain contact with the few remaining refuseniks and work in Israel and the U.S. to ease the integration of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

While President Reagan was visiting Bitburg, AJCongress leaders convened in Munich to hold a simultaneous memorial service at the graves of members of the White Rose Movement, German students executed in 1943 for demonstrating against the extermination of the Jews.

AJCongress has stood at the forefront of American efforts to halt the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, insisting to the United States administration and European governments that by refusing to intervene, governments acquiesce in Europe's most grievous calamity since the Holocaust.

We meet with representatives of the Vatican, with officials of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the newly freed Central European nations, and western European countries, to underscore our insistence on invoking their support for the eradication of anti-Semitism. We campaigned for the end of apartheid and met with South African leaders in the pursuit of equality in southern Africa. Our International Travel Program brings AJCongress members to Israel and to 40 countries on all six continents on high quality tours, missions and "heritage expeditions" of general And Jewish interest. Since its inception, more than 300,000 Jewish Americans have visited Israel under our auspices, more than have been brought to Israel by all other American Jewish organizations combined.

AJCongress' Stephen Wise Award is presented to men and women whose moral courage, love of liberty and service to humanity have perpetuated the tradition of AJCongress' founder. Since 1949, honorees have included Leonard Bernstein, David Ben Gurion, Mario Cuomo, David Dinkins, Abba Eban, Max Fisher, Arthur Goldberg, Chaim Herzog, Hubert H. Humphrey, Edward Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Teddy Kollek, Robert K Lipton, Golda Heir, Walter Mondale, Yitzhak Rabin, Howard Squadron, Adlai Stevenson, Harry S. Truman and Robert F. Wagner.