Not So Fast on Jewish Veep

Jewish World Review June 22, 2000 / 19 Sivan, 5760

Not So Fast on Jewish Veep

By Sidney Zion

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- A JEW for vice president? Never before has this been seriously suggested in America. But it appears now that Al Gore, who no longer dresses British, is thinking Yiddish.

So far, 5 1/2 Jews have been floated as possible veeps by the Gore campaign: Robert Rubin, the former treasury secretary; Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut; Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both of California. Plus, Defense Secretary William Cohen, whose father was a Jew, although William was not bar mitzvahed.

Here it is only June, and Jews are busting out all over. If Gore means business, will George W. Bush stare longingly at Alan Greenspan or maybe Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania?

Of course, few Jews believe this could happen. This is not because Jews think anti-Semitism is rampant in America. To the contrary, most Jews are certain that they are safe here and look with pleasure on the fact they have flourished in this country as in no other.

And they smile at the thought that a candidate for President would consider one of the brethren for his running mate. Some point to Bob Rubin as a great addition to the ticket, for he represents the Clinton economy, the boom Gore gets no credit for in the polls.

But what no poll can convince Jews of is that America is about to put a Jew within a heartbeat of the most powerful office in the world.

That possibility would overwhelm the election. If Gore should choose a Jew, nobody in the mainstream of party politics would dare attack him, of course. And the media would act as if it were nothing more than natural selection.

But if you don't have to be a Jew to love bagels, you don't have to be a goy to know that a Jew on the ticket is the ticket to disaster.

I wish it were not so, but unless America has become the first nation in world history to totally reject anti-Semitism and to accept Judaism without regard to its rejection of Christ, no Jew has a shot at the Oval Office.

But what if the country did accept a Jew as a potential President? Would it be good or bad for the Jews?

Had there been no Holocaust, the Jews would love it. But the history of Jewish leaders in America, from the advent of Hitler through the extermination and even until today, tells a story of Jews more concerned with their positions than with their brothers and sisters, first in Europe, now in Israel.

The Secular Jewish Establishment, led by Rabbi Stephen Wise, acted as apologist for Franklin Roosevelt, protecting him from his total refusal to save the Jews of Europe from Adolf Hitler. They delivered the Jewish vote to FDR even as Roosevelt proved to be, in author Ben Hecht's words, "the humanitarian who snubbed a massacre."

When Harry Truman placed an arms embargo on Israel in its crib, the Jewish leaders supported him without question and helped him with money to get elected in 1948.

In 1956, when President Dwight Eisenhower forced Israel to leave the Sinai to Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser after the first Six-Day War, New York's Sen. Jacob Javits carried the flag for Ike and convinced the Jews that Ike was the friend of Israel.

Henry Kissinger in 1973, working as secretary of state for Richard Nixon, tried to keep Tricky Dick from sending arms to a beleaguered Jewish State.

It goes on and on. It is not too much to say that no American Jewish statesman has done anything but bend over backward to prove that he or she is without dual loyalty.

And today, just ask any Israeli leader if he wants a Jewish vice president in America. He'll tell you, Think Yiddish. Which means, Oy, vey!