NADER'S GREEN PARTY CALLS FOR HALT OF AID TO ISRAEL
GADFLY CHARGES GORE, BUSH "TAKING SIDES" FOR ISRAEL
By NACHA CATTAN
THE FORWARD - 27 October: Ralph Nader's Green Party called this week for a suspension of United States aid to Israel and blamed the Jewish state for the current violence in the Middle East.
The statement paralleled a series of recent declarations by Mr. Nader, in which the third-party presidential candidate reportedly accused Vice President Gore of being "cowardly" in his stated support of Israel and criticized Mr. Gore and Governor Bush for "taking sides" on Israel's behalf in the Middle East conflict.
Mr. Nader, a son of Lebanese immigrants who is said to be fluent in Arabic, is best known as a consumer advocate. His views on the Middle East were not commonly known until a recent series of appearances.
Mr. Nader is polling as high as 11% in several key states and worrying Democratic activists who fear he is draining support from Mr. Gore.
Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan are hotbeds of Nader support as well as toss-up states in the dead heat between Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore.
Democratic activists are calling the Green Party's statement one of the most anti-Israel ever attributed to a party engaged in a presidential campaign.
They are demanding that Green Party Jews abandon Mr. Nader and his running mate, Winona LaDuke, a Native American activist whose mother is Jewish. Some 3% of Jews said they planned to vote for Mr. Nader, according to a recent survey by the American Jewish Committee.
The Green Party holds a "distorted view of Israel that is naÔve at best and malevolent at worst," the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Ira Forman, told the Forward. The party's statement, he said, "is representative of Ralph Nader's own views on the Middle East."
Mr. Nader's Jewish supporters, including some of the party's top officials, expressed surprise at their party's positions on the Middle East, most saying that they had not been aware of them. Most, however, said they would continue to support Mr. Nader based on his views on the environment, corporate accountability and opposition to standing global trade agreements.
Nader supporters also said that the Green candidate's foreign-policy positions do not matter because the candidate has no chance of being voted into office.
Mr. Nader's New York state coordinator, who is a former Yeshiva of Flatbush student and former resident of Israel whose father lives in the Galilee, said she did not know about the Green Party's statement. Masada Disenhouse declined to comment on the statement or Mr. Nader's stance on the Middle East.
The co-chairman of New Mexico's Green Party, Elisheva Crowell, said that she disagrees with the Green Party's statement, which was approved after being distributed via e-mail among state party chairmen. However, Ms. Crowell said that she will vote Green to help the party capture the 5% of the national vote needed to earn federal matching funds for the 2004 campaign.
"Ralph Nader presents the Jewish views of justice and giving a voice to groups that traditionally have been voiceless," Ms. Crowell said.
The statement by the Association of State Green Parties "condemns the excessive use of force against Palestinians" in the current conflict and lays the "greater responsibility [on] Israel for the conflict both in this immediate crisis and in Israel's continuing history of non-compliance with international law and U.N. resolutions." The statement calls for a cessation of all further aid to Israel until the Jewish state agrees to withdraw from land acquired since 1967, transform Jerusalem into a "shared city" and honor the Palestinians' "inalienable rights to return."
A co-publisher of the left-leaning Jewish magazine Tikkun, record producer Danny Goldberg, who helped raise $30,000 for Mr. Nader, said that he continues to support Mr. Nader despite the statement. He said that he would only switch his vote if he felt Mr. Nader was against Israel's security and against giving foreign aid.
"I don't support using aid as the vehicle of putting pressure on the U.S." said Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor and co-publisher of Tikkun and member of the Nader 2000 committee. However, he said, "I wouldn't be supporting him for his positions on the Middle East, because his campaign is not about foreign policy."
Mr. Nader has yet to release an official position on Israel. Nader campaign aides, when questioned about his views on the Middle East, referred a reporter to recent articles in the press.
According to a report in the online journal NewsForChange.com, Mr. Nader told a St. Louis press conference last week that the United States should use its influence to push its ally to "stop provoking the much-weaker Palestinians." Said Mr. Nader, "Maybe if the U.S. is a bit more forceful, and answers questions like [those asked by] Vice President Gore a little more candidly, instead of so cowardly ... there will be an agreement reached, and in a few years both Palestinians and Israelis will wonder why it took 'em so long.".
In an October 6 interview with Columbia University's Columbia Daily Spectator, Mr. Nader is quoted as saying, "The idea of using lethal force against people who are throwing rocks — youngsters — is abhorrent; I don't think anybody can justify that kind of bloodshed when one party has such huge military superiority over the other."
There is evidence that some Jewish leftists have been turning away from Mr. Nader in recent days, but not because of his Middle East views. "As much as I sympathize with what the Green Party stands for, I'm afraid that the new Supreme Court picks will be detrimental if Bush is elected president," said the executive director of the Los Angeles-based Progressive Jewish Alliance, Daniel Sokatch.
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