Casey was eager for Fisher to sign on with Reagan. He knew that if Reagan had Fisher with him, then Ford would probably join as well. Casey told Fisher that Ford had been mentioned as a possible choice for the vice presidency. Fisher replied that he didn’t know if Ford would be interested. Casey told him to talk about it with the former president. Then Casey said that some of the Reagan campaign people opposed the idea of a fund-raiser in Detroit because the candidate had not gar- nered enough support among corporations. The campaign people were afraid that a bad showing would embarrass Reagan and highlight his lack of corporate backing.
“Max,” Casey asked, “how do you think we’ll do in Detroit?” “I’ll take care of it,” Fisher said.
On May 14, Fisher and Robert Evans held a cocktail party and a dinner that netted $330,000 for the Reagan campaign. Also of primary importance was the effect of these fundraisers on the press’s percep- tion of Reagan.
On Friday, May 16, Bill Peterson of The Washington Post wrote: “Ronald Reagan is finally picking up the support of one group that has long eluded him —the corporate boardroom crowd.” Peterson re- counted Reagan’s successful speech at a Detroit Economic Club lun- cheon, where he sat between Thomas Murphy, chairman of General Motors, and William Agee, chairman of Bendix Corp. Then Peterson said: “The $1,000 fund-raising dinner was even more impressive. The guest list included top executive officers from General Motors, Ow - ens-Illinois, Burroughs Corp., Marathon Oil, K-Mart, Ford Motors, and a host of other companies. Henry Ford II didn’t make it, but he sold $10,000 in tickets.”
Following his swing through Michigan, Reagan got busy mending fences. As Fisher had advised him, Reagan phoned Ford. In June, he visited him in Rancho Mirage. Immediately after the meeting, Ford called Fisher at the Regency Hotel in New York City. Ford said that the visit had gone well; there had been some more talk of Ford taking the vice-presidential spot and creating a dream ticket. Ford told Fisher that he declined the offer, adding that as much as he would like to cam- paign for Reagan, he was going to be tied up with speaking engage-
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ments to raise $600,000 for the completion of the Ford Library on the main campus of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Fisher got in touch with Casey and explained about the Ford Library and the need for a further gesture from the Reagan people.
“What kind of gesture?” Casey inquired.
Fisher said: “Maybe if help with the library was offered.”
The details were quickly arranged. Fisher and Casey assumed the fund-raising chores, so that Ford was free to campaign for Reagan. Fisher, who had already raised over $500,000 for the library, made another pledge to get things rolling. Casey himself gave $5,000. By July 14, the opening night of the Republican Convention, the money was raised.
Gerald Ford delivered. In his speech to the 10,000 delegates who were assembled at Joe Louis Arena on the banks of the Detroit River, the former president said: “Elder statesmen are supposed to sit quietly and smile wisely from the sidelines. I’ve never been much for sitting. I’ve never spent much time on the sidelines.... So when this convention fields a team for Governor Reagan, count me in.”
Reagan and Casey thanked Fisher profusely for bringing Ford aboard. And Reagan loved Ford’s speech. His phrase, “count me in,” intrigued him. Perhaps Ford was interested in being his running mate. Reagan authorized Casey to meet with a Ford team, led by former Sec- retary of State Henry Kissinger, to investigate the feasibility of fielding such a ticket.
As newspaper reporters, network correspondents and not a few GOPinsiders were tracking down the former president for a comment, Ford and his wife —with a mob of Secret Service agents at their heels —exited the arena’s backstage entrance, where Fisher was waiting for them in his burgundy Lincoln. The Fords rode with Fisher to his house in Franklin. That Monday evening, July 14, was Jerry Ford’s sixty-sev- enth birthday; Fisher would turn seventy-two on Tuesday, and so they sat on the red chintz-covered chairs in Fisher’s garden room, eating coconut cake and chatting about the convention with Betty Ford and Marjorie Fisher, former Ambassador Leonard K. Firestone and his wife, Nickie, and the Fishers’ daughter, Mary, who had worked as an
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advance person in the Ford White House, helping to arrange the innu- merable details associated with the president’s travels.
The serious political talk came the next morning when Fisher and Ford met in Fisher’s upstairs library. Negotiations were proceeding between the Ford and Reagan camp to draw up the dream ticket. Fish- er and Ford discussed the possibility for several hours, determining that there were three main reasons why such a ticket was not feasible: spheres of responsibility could not be adequately defined; their staffs would never be able to co-exist peacefully and productively; and the situation would be too competitive for their wives, neither of whom would fully be acknowledged as first lady.
Ford concluded: “Even though it can’t be done, we still have to lis- ten to the Reagan proposal out of sense of deference.”
Fisher agreed that Ford should listen politely but try to guard against too much talk of a Reagan-Ford ticket, which could hurt the ultimate ticket in November. Private negotiations between the camps lagged on for thirty-six hours, with the attendant speculations in the press, but, in reality, the matter was closed. The official conclusion occurred late Wednesday night when Ford met alone with Reagan. Ford departed the hotel suite smiling and Reagan told his staff: “His answer was no. He didn’t think it was right for him or me. I’m going to call George [H.] Bush.”
Ford campaigned wholeheartedly for Reagan; Fisher mined his net- work for funds and worked the Jewish community. Given Reagan’s far-right image, Fisher encountered resistance to him. One member of the community asked Fisher: “Do you think Reagan can find Israel on a map?” Fisher replied that he could do far more than that. Before the election, Fisher spoke to Reagan about Israel on three separate oc- casions and he came away agreeing with what Richard Nixon later privately told him: that of all the presidents since 1948, Ronald Reagan had the strongest emotional commitment to the Jewish State.
Two years after leaving the presidency, Reagan explains the roots of his personal tie to Israel: “Though there are religious differences between Christianity and Judaism,” he says, “we worship the same God: the Holy Land is the Holy Land to a great many of us. And then,
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after the trials and tribulations of the Jews during the Second World War, the idea of them having a homeland there again with all the tradi- tions that go with it, is something that every American should be able to appreciate. All of us in America go back in our ancestry to some other part of the world. There is no nation like us. Except Israel. Both nations are melting pots. All of us in the United States have a feeling for our heritage as well as the fact that we are Americans. And so it is with the Jews and Israel —everyone coming from somewhere else to live in freedom.”
During the 1980 campaign, Fisher — as he had done with Nix- on — helped Reagan explain his thinking on Israel and Soviet Jew- ry to the organized American Jewish community. On September 3, Reagan addressed a B’nai B’rith forum in Washington, D.C. Fisher had worked on the speech with Reagan adviser Richard V. Allen. The speech contained specific attacks on the Carter administration’s relationship to Israel and the Soviet Union. Within the opening thir- ty seconds, the candidate said: “In defending Israel’s right to exist, we defend the very values upon which our nation is built. The long agony of Jews in the Soviet Union is never far from our minds and hearts. All these suffering people ask is that their families get the chance to work where they choose, in freedom and peace. They will not be forgotten by a Reagan administration.”
Additionally, Fisher touted Reagan’s position in Israel, speaking to Prime Minister Menachem Begin and other leaders, and telling The Jerusalem Post that Reagan was “much more moderate than he is per- ceived and his commitment to Israel is firmly based on his assessment of Israel’s importance to the United States as a reliable ally in a vital strategic area. An America led by Reagan would be a [more] convinc- ing America in the international arena — and thus an America that Israel could safely rely on.”
Yet once Reagan soundly defeated Carter in the 1980 election, Fish- er did not enjoy the same easy access to the Oval Office that he had during previous Republican administrations. His personal relationship with Reagan, while congenial, did not include the kind of closeness that he had shared with Nixon and Ford. As Washington Post reporter
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Lou Cannon points out in President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, as a latecomer to politics and an outsider in Washington, “Reagan lacked the network of alliances and friendships normally forged by politicians as they scramble up the career ladder.” As president, however, Reagan did depend on what Cannon calls “offstage influences.” Among the most influential of these was Richard Nixon.
Seven years had passed since Nixon had resigned the presidency, and by now he had some cause for contentment. He had published his memoirs and was writing on foreign affairs. He was not free from the taint of Watergate and scholars would quarrel over the value of his accomplishments. But at last his geopolitical achievements, from the partial strategic arms limitation treaty with the Soviet Union to the path he cleared to the People’s Republic of China —what Henry Kissinger calls Nixon’s “seminal contributions” —were beginning to be acknowledged.
Democrats and Republicans alike sought Nixon’s advice —but out of the public eye. Michael Oksenberg, a member of the National Secu- rity Council under Carter, was sent to brief Nixon after relations with China were normalized. Nixon became a consultant to President Rea- gan and others in his administration on issues ranging from the defense budget to the squabbles among the staff in the West Wing of the White House. One of the recommendations Nixon made to Reagan was that he talk to Fisher.
In a private memo to the White House, Nixon wrote: “I have a sug- gestion to make on Mideast policy, generally and particularly with re- gard to relations with Israel. As you know better than I, you are over- whelmed with people inside and outside the government who profess to speak for the Jewish community. Many of them are simply in busi- ness for themselves or for their particular constituencies. By far, the best man we worked with and one who was invaluable when Kissinger was working out the disengagement plans on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts was Max Fisher. He knows [the] Israeli government leaders in- timately and could always carry the message to Garcia, even if it was unpleasant when we asked him to do so. He also is greatly respected among the various Jewish organizations because of his enormous con-
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tributions on the fund-raising front. But most important, he is one of those rare individuals supporting Israel’s position who can always be counted upon for total, loyal support for whatever decision is made by the administration. Equally important, he can keep his mouth shut. I would strongly urge that you personally have him down for lunch or a talk, get his advice, and use him for special assignments. I can attest from personal experience that he will never let you down.”
In general, though, Reagan opted to leave the finer points of foreign policy to his advisers. Thus, Fisher did not meet with him as he had met with Nixon and Ford. Instead, Fisher found that his access to pol- icy-makers ran through the stylishly appointed, oak-paneled office of Reagan’s secretary of state, General Alexander Haig.
Fisher had become friendly with Haig during the Nixon adminis- tration, when the general was serving as Kissinger’s deputy on the National Security Council and later as Nixon’s chief of staff. Haig trusted Fisher, respecting his facility for getting along with the diver- gent personalities at the White House and in the State Department. Haig says that Fisher’s achievements owed much to the fact that “Max was viewed as a patriot and, to his everlasting glory, he’s a persistent sonovabitch. There are no ends to which he won’t go to communicate his concerns. He traveled enough to Israel so that if you watched him you knew that he had a good feel for the pulse of [Israeli leaders], their demeanor and attitude.”
Haig was eager to use Fisher’s contacts with the leaders in Israel, believing that “it is always helpful to have an extra channel that influ - ences more formal dialogue.” And as the administration got under way, Fisher wasted little time cementing his relationship with the secretary of state. On March 2, he was in Haig’s office giving him a reading on the situation in Israel. Although the Labor Party’s Shimon Peres was rising in the polls, Fisher said, Begin would win re-election. Fisher was leaving for Israel in two weeks and he promised to meet with Haig when he returned. He also told the secretary of state that he was in the process of bringing leaders of the American Jewish community togeth- er with the White House to discuss the controversy over the impending sale of Airborne Warning and Command Systems to Saudi Arabia.
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AWACS, flying radar systems that are used to pinpoint incoming aircraft or missiles and to direct the launching of defensive or offen- sive missiles, became a conundrum for Haig as he was taking office. Since 1948, every administration has considered selling arms to Arab nations and weathered the corresponding political flak. Yet perhaps no administration had to wrestle with this problem as quickly as the Reagan White House.
Says Haig: “The Carter administration had made a commitment to the Saudi government. And we were faced with this horrible dilemma of a foreign commitment we had to honor. And so I started, during the transition, making this clear to my Israeli counterpart, [Foreign Minister] Yitzhak Shamir. And basically the Israeli government was prepared to accept the sale.”
Much of the American Jewish community, and the Congress, were not prepared to accept it, and the administration came under fire. Ac - cording to Haig, the conflict over the sale was unnecessary.
“Of course,” says Haig, “the Jewish community, unaware of my dialogue with Shamir, was pushing against the sale. But the problem was that [Secretary of Defense Caspar W.] Weinberger made a public statement that not only were we selling the Saudis AWACS, we were going to sell them [advanced sidewinder air-to-air missiles and extra fuel tanks designed to increase the AWACS range approximately 900 miles]. And then Shamir is blown out of the saddle by Begin. And that’s when the rail really started. The whole controversy was a direct result of the lack of discipline in the Reagan administration and Wein- berger’s Arabist proclivities.”
It also cheapened what Haig believes are the two most important com- modities in foreign policy, “reliability and consistency.” He says that if the Reagan administration hoped to draw the Saudis into the Ameri- can camp at the expense of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, then they were stumbling over faulty logic. “You cannot impress new friends by screw- ing old friends,” Haig states. “Because they say to themselves: ‘Today it’s an old friend getting screwed; tomorrow it’ll be me.’”
Fisher was thrust into the controversy within the organized Ameri- can Jewish community, which was lobbying to kill the sale. Haig feels
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that “some people accept the conventional wisdom that the Ameri- can Jewish community wields unprecedented influence on U.S. poli - cy-making. Based on my experience, I don’t find it to be true. There is no dominant thinking in the American Jewish community. There’s the left and the right. Max’s influence came from his Republicanism and that we had a Republican president who had confidence in him. Max didn’t get anything, in practical terms, by being the Republican Party’s guru on Israel. He took a lot of heat, with all the infighting, which is a product of the Jewish community being a philosophical potpourri. But the stereotype of Jewish money and Jewish control is appalling. I’ve seen it in practice and they’re not as influential as portrayed —by both sides. Everybody likes to think they are influencing things especial - ly when organizations have been put together to accomplish missions along those lines. But that influence is just not there.”
Yet many in the Reagan administration, exquisitely sensitive to pub- lic opinion and hoping to get the AWACS sale through Congress with a minimum of warring in the press, agreed to meet with a delegation of thirty-two Jewish Republican leaders on the afternoon of March ll. The agenda, though, was not to include the sale, but rather Reagan’s initiatives for prodding the lagging economy.
On the morning prior to the White House encounter, Fisher chaired a closed-door meeting with Jewish leaders at the Hay-Adams Hotel. Senator Rudolph E. Boschwitz of Minnesota, a Jewish Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Middle East, was at the Hays-Adams along with Thomas A. Dine, the new executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Commit- tee (AIPAC), the official pro-Israel lobbying organization in Congress. Boschwitz informed the group that eleven of the seventeen members of the Foreign Relations Committee supported a resolution blocking the sale —all eight Democrats and three Republicans. Boschwitz then stated that he was vehemently opposed to the sale. He urged the del- egation to argue against it with Reagan, claiming that if they did not the administration would exploit the silence of the Jewish community during its congressional lobbying efforts.
Fisher was incensed. Nothing angered him more than what he
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deemed reckless judgment, and Boschwitz’s suggestion ran counter to everything he regarded as sacrosanct when dealing with oppositional points of view. What, he asked the delegation, was to be gained by at- tacking the administration? Making it appear as though the American Jewish community were forcing Congress to choose between Reagan and Begin? Deals were never closed in the spirit of confrontation. Bet - ter to work behind closed doors. Besides, the Israeli government had made a deal with the White House not to push for a confrontation. Fur- thermore, Fisher said, there were strategic considerations. Any lasting Middle East peace, said Fisher, will involve the cooperation of the Saudis. The bottom line is not the AWACS, but who will have influ - ence — and how much — with the Arabs? The United States or the Soviet Union, which is not friendly toward Israel? If the White House wins this debate, then Saudi Arabia will be in the administration’s debt, which is good for America and good for Israel.
Fisher was sharply rebuffed by the majority of the group. Although no one said it, many thought that he was again acting as the administra- tion’s court Jew. Tom Dine circulated AIPAC’s six-page memorandum protesting the sale. A vote was taken, which favored the drafting of a statement opposing the deal. Fisher was chosen to read it to the presi- dent. Then the delegation left for the White House.
In the Cabinet Room, Reagan was flanked by Fisher and Ted Cum - mings. Seated across the table were Vice President George Bush, with the Jewish delegation filling the rest of the chairs at the table and along the walls. After the reporters were ushered out, Reagan spoke about his domestic economic program. He did not mention Israel.
Fisher responded with the prepared statement. According to the text, he was supposed to say, “We are deeply disturbed by, and opposed to, the proposed sale of equipment to enhance the offensive capability of the Saudi Arabian F-15s without a change in Saudi opposition toward the Camp David peace process.” Instead, he substituted, “We are a little bit disturbed by,” and dropped “opposed to.”
Those in the delegation who supported the statement were angry, but Fisher held his ground: he would not embarrass the president in public; all of Fisher’s experience with government officials taught him
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this was not an effective way to play the game. Reagan, affable as al- ways, replied by assuring the group that the United States would make certain that the balance of arms, in qualitative terms, would remain in Israel’s favor and reaffirmed his campaign commitments toward Israel. Immediately after the session, Fisher spoke at a White House news conference. His tone was conciliatory, but he was obviously annoyed at Republican Jewish leaders who had criticized him because he thought it was in everyone’s best interest not to clash publicly with the White House. Israeli leaders, he said, would have to make up their own minds about the sale, and perhaps they already had, since it appeared they were ready to live with a deal whereby Israel would receive an addi- tional $600 million in military loans.
Less than a week later, Fisher was in Israel bluntly telling The Je- rusalem Post: “I don’t think the White House meeting was useful.” When he returned to Detroit, he phoned Haig, informing the secretary of state that further discussions were needed on the AWACS — maybe at a small meeting, a forum that would not be used as a staging area to attack the administration. Haig told him to set it up.
Yet by the time this group gathered on June 25, the situation had radically shifted.
Reagan had been shot on March 31. The next day, during a Na- tional Security Council meeting chaired by Vice President Bush, De- fense Secretary Weinberger pressed for —and won — NSC-approval to sell the additional equipment to Saudi Arabia. Haig was reportedly skeptical about giving the Saudis such sophisticated equipment, but his role within the administration was being undermined by Weinberger, Reagan’s domestic advisers and the secretary of state’s embarrassing “I’m-in control here” statement after Reagan was wounded.
On June 7, 1981, the relationship between Washington and Jerusa- lem underwent further strain. While the debate over AWACS raged, the Israeli government’s immediate focus was not on Saudi Arabia, but on Iraq. With physical assistance from France and Italy, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had been able to construct a nuclear reactor in his country and was developing nuclear weapons. According to Amos Per- lmutter, biographer of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, in the
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eyes of Begjn, a survivor of the Holocaust, “Hussein was Hitler, and the nuclear reactor at Osirak was a technologically advanced version of the Final Solution.”
On June 7, the Israeli Air Force destroyed the reactor. The Reagan administration openly deplored Israel’s actions. In an unprecedented move, they suspended shipments of F-16 aircraft to the Israelis and ap- proved a U.N. Security Council condemnation of Israel. The American Jewish community was vexed by the condemnation, a feeling that in- tensified when the press revealed that President Reagan telephoned his ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, at her vacation home in St. Remy, Prance, to congratulate her on her deft handling of the resolution.
Thus, on June 25, when a small delegation of Republican Jews, headed by Fisher, met with White House counselor Edwin Meese III to convey their opposition to the administration’s proposed sale of the AWACS, the Saudi sale was no longer the predominant topic of con- cern. Fisher said that the community was disturbed by the adminis- tration’s treatment of Israel — in general. Meese answered that the administration still supported the Israelis, in spite of the recent strain. Meese listened to them, and then departed. Nothing, Fisher thought, had been accomplished.
In July, two weeks after his seventy-third birthday, Fisher went to Washington and spoke privately with Secretary of State Haig for an hour. The secretary applauded the Israeli raid on Iraq and said that the administration was being shortsighted: Hussein should not have nucle- ar weapons. (Nearly a decade later, in January 1991, with the Persian Gulf War under way, Fisher recalled Begin’s decision and his conver- sation with Haig, and commented that time had proven both of them right.) However, Haig told Fisher, the administration resented Begin’s pre-emptive actions, not only in Iraq but now with his attack on the PLO in Lebanon. Haig suggested that discussions with Begin should get started to resolve these issues. Fisher said that he would speak to Begin. Haig and Fisher also discussed the problems, from Haig’s van- tage point, of formulating foreign policy in the Reagan White House, with Meese and National Security Adviser Richard Allen coordinating
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policy for the president, and Weinberger undercutting Haig at every opportunity. Fisher said that the Israelis were aware of this and were not trying to make things more difficult for the secretary.
Sadat was assassinated in October, and senators, who were drawing near to a vote on the AWACS, were worried that defeating the sale would promote instability in the region. The sale was passed by the Senate at the end of October, and the Reagan administration, attempt- ing to mend fences with the American Jewish community, scheduled a meeting with their leaders on November 19. Two hours before the meeting, Fisher met with Haig. The secretary told him that Meese and Weinberger were again intruding on foreign policy. Later, in his notes of the meeting, Fisher wrote: “Haig is a good man. He is going to need some help.”
At the White House, President Reagan told American Jewish lead- ers that the proposed level of U.S.-and-Israeli strategic cooperation would be substantive, not “cosmetic.” The leaders voiced their distress over the anti-Semitic rhetoric that emerged around the AWACS debate. The meeting, however, did little to mitigate the bitterness that lingered between Washington and Jerusalem.
While entangled in the controversy, Fisher briefly turned his atten - tion to business. On January 7, 1982, U.S. Steel purchased Marathon Oil, paying $125 per share. Fisher, with 665,115 shares of Marathon stock, realized over $83 million. Then, before the year was out, Fish- er’s interest in the Irvine Ranch came to a highly profitable conclusion. Al Taubman and Donald Bren, co-chairman of Irvine Co., were at odds over which one of them was running Irvine. Bren offered to buy out the partnership for $518 million. With California real estate in a slump and land-use regulations hindering further development, Fisher prevailed upon Taubman to sell, and Bren purchased Irvine Co. Taubman walked away with $140 million; Fisher with $100 million.
Less profitable, but more enjoyable for Fisher, the ex-football line - man, was his investment with Taubman in the Michigan Panthers of the United States Football League. The USFLhad a short run; the own- ers lost millions, but Fisher was consoled by the fact that the Panthers won a league championship.
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One afternoon, not long after the Irvine sale, Taubman phoned Fisher. The gist of the conversation, Fisher says, was that Taubman wanted to buy Sotheby’s Holdings, the parent of the then-financially ailing London-based art auction house. The British government had been dragging its heels on a $100-million takeover bid from two New York businessmen, Marshall Cogan and Stephen Swid. When Cogan and Swid heard that Taubman was interested in buying Sotheby’s, they contacted Fisher and asked him why Taubman was competing with them. Fisher replied: “Al’s got a $140 million burning a hole in his pocket and he’s looking around to invest it.”
Six months later, Taubman, Fisher, Henry Ford II, Milton Petrie and Leslie H, Wexner, owner of the Limited clothing stores, acquired So- theby’s for $139 million. (In 1990, Fortune magazine, in reference to the group’s profits, would dub the five men, “the $400 million friend - ship.”) It was rumored that Henry Ford II helped push the deal through by putting in a good word with Queen Elizabeth II.
Fisher had scant time to savor his success. Secretary of State Haig was increasingly disgusted with his eroding power in the administration and was reportedly angered at the White House’s condemnation of Israel for attacking the PLO in Beirut. So, in late June 1982, Haig resigned. With the nomination of George Shultz as his successor, Fisher was cast into the middle of a shrill debate within the organized Jewish communi- ty, a segment of which contended that Shultz was as obdurate an Arabist, and therefore as anti-Israel, as Defense Secretary Weinberger.
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In November of 1990, at the 59th annual meeting of the Council of Jewish Federations, George Shultz told the following tale. It seems that he was on a business trip in London, when the White House, with its fabled proficiency for locating anyone in the world, called a phone booth he happened to be ambling past. Shultz picked up the phone and President Reagan was on the line proposing that he take the job of sec- retary of state. Shultz accepted, and as soon as he hung up, the phone rang again. He answered it.
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“Hello, George,” said Fisher. “I hear you’re going to be the new secretary of state. How can I help you?”
The apocryphal story was indicative of the working relationship that developed between Fisher and the new secretary of state. “Whenever Max wanted to talk with me,” says Shultz, “he could call and talk. He had easy access to me and I relied on Max for advice on all kinds of things, including our work with Israel and the peace process.”
The objections that some members of the organized American Jew- ish community expressed about Shultz’s nomination centered on his employer. since 1974, Shultz had been executive president of the Cal- ifornia-based Bechtel Group, a private multi-billion dollar engineering and construction firm with strong ties to oil-rich Arab states. (Before becoming secretary of defense, Weinberger had served as Bechtel’s general counsel.) Journalist Laton McCartney, author of Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, asserts that Bechtel ran “deep with country club-style anti-Semitism,” a charge that Shultz denies. “Bechtel was unjustly accused,” says Shultz. “The spill over about [the company] being internally anti-Semitic was totally wrong. One of our chief officers was Jewish, but we didn’t think of it that way — we just thought of him as a terrific guy. People didn’t even know that one of [Stephen D. Bechtel Jr.’s] sons-in-law was Jewish.”
It was not the rumored anti-Semitism that rankled some in the Jew- ish community, but Bechtel’s business with Libya and Saudi Arabia, and its adherence to the Arab boycott —the same financial bludgeon that Arab nations wielded against the Ford Motor Company when Henry II decided to do business with Israel in the 1970s.
“As far as the Arab boycott goes,” Shultz says, “Bechtel did a lot of business with various Arab countries and didn’t do any business with Israel, although it had tried on one or two occasions —I happen to know. But it didn’t. Bechtel was rather careful legally about what it did. And in the end, the record proves it.”
Fisher was appalled by the charges that Shultz was either anti-Se- mitic or hostile toward Israel. He had known Shultz since 1969, when Nixon appointed him secretary of labor. They established, Fisher says, an immediate rapport. It is not hard to see why. Both men were
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courtly and soft-spoken, but direct, with a good eye for the bottom line, and a conciliatory style that masked the steel core of natural, and tough, negotiators.
In conversation with Shultz, Fisher learned how the then-secretary of labor viewed the strategic importance of Israel to the United States and how he had developed an appreciation for Israeli patriotism.
In the mid-1960s, Shultz was the dean of the University of Chica- go’s graduate school of business, and he became friendly with a stu- dent from Israel, Yosef Levy.
“Joe was a terrific young man,” says Shultz. “He had charm and he was savvy. My wife and I had a custom of having a party at the end of each quarter for the students on the dean’s list —a fairly select group — and Joe was always there. So we came to know and admire him. When the [Six-Day War] broke out [on June 5, 1967], before we even realized Joe had [returned to his army unit in Israel], we heard that he had been killed on the Golan Heights. My wife and I were stunned. “We also learned something about Israel from him. The ultimate compliment a school like the University of Chicago can pay a grad- uate student is to invite him to be on the faculty. And we would have invited Joe. But it was very clear that his idea was to come and study and then go back to Israel. He had no interest in staying in the United States. It was such a contrast to students from so many other countries who spend half their time figuring out how to stay here. So it taught us something about Israel. And when he went back to fight — he didn’t wait for somebody to call. As soon as he heard [about the war], he left. When I went to Israel in 1969, as secretary of labor, I visited his par- ents [to offer my condolences ].”
On June 2,8, Fisher was in Jerusalem for meetings at the Jewish Agency when he fired off a congratulatory cable to Shultz, stating: “I resent the implications that you might be biased in your judgment because of your present business association [with the Bechtel Group]. I have always known you to be a fair, honorable man with a real sense of integrity. Be assured of my cooperation.”
Next, Fisher cabled Ed Meese at the White House, asking him to “please convey to the president my congratulations for his appoint-
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ment of George Shultz as secretary of state. I have known George for many years and find him to be a man of great integrity and ability with a sense of fairness. I am prepared to publicly support him. If you want to use this statement of support you may do so. If there is anything else I can do, please contact me.”
Finally, Fisher cabled the chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Rela- tions Committee, Senator Charles H. Percy, a Republican from Illi- nois, telling him, in effect, what he had told Meese. However worded, though, Fisher’s meaning was clear: If the organized Jewish communi- ty protests the appointment, or works against the confirmation, Fisher was willing to do whatever was possible to see that Shultz became secretary of state.
After flying back to the United States, Fisher went to see Haig at his home. As with Nixon’s loss in 1960, Fisher knew how painful the reality of fair-weather political friends could be, and so he supported Haig on his decision and commiserated with him over his predicament in the administration.
Meantime, Shultz was easily confirmed as secretary of state, and he began consulting frequently with Fisher. Although Shultz says that “it’s better for the government to use official diplomatic channels,” for communicating its positions, and remains “an advocate for using the ambassador,” he found talking with Fisher helpful.
Says Shultz: “I felt that Max was the person who knew the straight story and whose opinion carried real [weight in Israel and in the Amer- ican Jewish community]. So I instinctively turned to him. You could speak confidentially to him and trust him. He was always on the level. He didn’t try to manipulate. He told you what he believed and what he was going to do. Whenever he went to Israel he would check in with me, and when he got back he would check in again. He could give you a sense of people’s thinking.”
Fisher could also help mediate between the organized American Jewish community and the administration, which was crucial to Shul- tz, since President Reagan was preparing to set forth his plan for Mid- dle East peace, and the administration was going to need the support of the Jewish community.
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“Before President Reagan made his speech we had a lot of discus- sions with people about what to do,” explains Shultz, who, like Fisher, was a dedicated consensus builder. “The Israelis were in Beirut. We had just gotten the PLO out and the situation in Lebanon seemed to have settled down a bit. We felt that Lebanon was one issue, but the West Bank and Gaza were deeper problems, and we wanted to address them. I had extensive confrontations with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House. I consulted with Max and a group of leaders from the American Jewish community. We put out a position, saying, ‘Here’s what we are going to propose. What do you think? What are your ideas?’They were being consulted throughout the process. I think there was a pretty good reception to [our peace plan] in the United States and Europe, and in the American Jewish community. And one of the reasons was that we had listened to people, so if somebody tried to upset our decisions, they wouldn’t be able to.”
Shultz reached out to the American Jewish community because he feels they are an integral part of U.S. foreign policy toward Israel. “One of the unique things about America is that everybody here is, in a sense, from somewhere else,” says Shultz. “So, if you’re secretary of state, you realize that there are all of these constituencies out there. For example, the biggest Polish city outside of Warsaw is Chicago. And so if you’re going to do something about Poland, you’d better see what the people in Chicago think. And if you’re not thinking about Poland, then they are going to remind you to think about Poland. It’s character- istic of our foreign policy that we care more about what’s happening in various countries than most other countries do about what’s going on someplace else. And the reason is that we have this variety of constit- uencies. The American Jewish community is a strong well-organized group and I think it performs a useful role in this unique aspect of American foreign policy. And we shouldn’t apologize for listening to them or any other [ethnic or religious] community.”
On August 5, Fisher and a group of Jewish leaders met with Shultz, Vice President Bush and Defense Secretary Weinberger. Fisher’s notes on the meeting reveal that the three administration officials agreed that Lebanon should be a free state and the PLO eliminated. But they also
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expressed the same opinion — that Israel’s continued bombing and shelling of Beirut was too harsh and that the top priority after the con- flict ended was autonomy for the Palestinians.
The group’s reactions were mixed. Like the majority of American Jewry, Fisher and the other leaders did not oppose Palestinian auton- omy because they questioned the moral right of Palestinians to have a state, or an entity, of their own. Their objections were founded on their fear for Israel’s safety once this homeland was created. If the administration could design a plan that allotted Israel defensible bor- ders and extracted a dependable commitment to peace from Palestin- ian leadership, then possibly the situation could be resolved. Ideas of how to accomplish these goals were fired back and forth. Discussions were heated, but compared to the tensions over the AWACS sale, Fish- er judged the meeting to be a success.
On September 1, 1982, President Reagan unfurled his blueprint for Middle East peace. The Reagan Plan recommended that Jordani- an-Palestinian-Israeli negotiations begin, with a seat reserved at the bargaining table for the PLO. It also called for a Palestinian entity on the West Bank in association with Jordan.
Israeli Prime Minister Begin violently rejected the plan, grousing in private that Israel had just defeated the PLO and now Reagan was resurrecting them. In all likelihood, Begin, with his legalistic bent, objected to the plan on what he perceived as more legitimate and meaningful grounds.
Ever since the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel had been amenable to swap- ping land for peace, and had done so with Egypt, Yet land is Israel’s sole bargaining chip with Arab nations, and therefore to tolerate the wording of a proposal that challenges their sovereignty over any territory under their control robs them of these chips —the lone currency and hope they have for peace. What appeared to be hairsplitting by Begin was a bid to preserve the long-term prospect for peace. For a prime minister to do otherwise would be irresponsible. And this conviction was not limited to the legalistic Begin. Seven years later, it kindled Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s fiery resistance to President George Bush’s character - ization of East Jerusalem as “occupied territory.”
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The Reagan administration went about the business of marketing its proposal. On September 12, Shultz spoke before 300 people at a Unit- ed Jewish Appeal big-gifts dinner in New York City. Fisher, wrapped up in preliminary discussions on the Sotheby purchase, could not at- tend. But Shultz asked Fisher to review a draft of his speech and the secretary of state incorporated some of Fisher’s suggestions into the text. Standing before the audience, in the midst of his defense of the Reagan Plan, Shultz departed from his written speech and said: “I’m not sure my good friend, Max Fisher, would agree with everything I have to say, but —”
The audience laughed. Then applause broke out around the room. Whatever the validity of the administration’s initiatives, events worked to undermine peace. Four days after Shultz’s speech, Lebanese Phalangists massacred Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. The massacre brought protests over Israel’s inva- sion of Lebanon to a head. Consequently, Israel’s Kahan Commission ruled that Israeli General Ariel Sharon was indirectly responsible for the killing by allowing the Phalangists into the camps.
On October 28, Fisher met alone with Shultz in Washington, and tried to assist the secretary in inducing the Begin government to accept, at least in part, the Reagan Plan. Fisher advised Shultz to be patient and low-key; overtly criticizing Begin would harden his stance, as would cutting Israel out of the process to resolve the conflict in Lebanon. Begin should be invited to the United States for a visit, Fisher said, and then pressed to meet with King Hussein of Jordan. This would stimulate movement on that aspect of the plan and perhaps force a showdown on West-Bank rule. Meanwhile, the Palestinians should be pressured to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Finally, Fisher said, Be- gin’s wife, Aliza was dying. The prime minister had always described her as more than a helpmate, but as the one person in the world to whom he could talk. President Reagan, said Fisher, should send Begin a letter expressing his concern for Aliza’s failing health.
His efforts notwithstanding, Fisher was pessimistic about peace. Of all the secretary of states with whom Fisher dealt, he was, in outlook and demeanor, most similar to George Shultz, and because of their
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similarities Fisher was also the most candid with him. In their tele- phone conversations over the next few months, Fisher expressed his doubts about the Israelis and Palestinians reaching common ground. Feeling that he had unintentionally disheartened the secretary of state, he wrote to Shultz: “I didn’t mean to be quite as negative be- cause I believe there is an opportunity for peace and the initiatives that you are taking are ones that I wholeheartedly support. As a result of your meeting [with American Jewish leaders, they have] a very warm personal feeling about you. They may have not agreed with some of the administration’s ideas, but on a personal level you have their con- fidence, which is vital. George, please don’t get discouraged. I still see the light at the end of the tunnel and if there is anything I can do to make that light brighter, please don’t hesitate to call upon me.”
One of the things that Fisher could do was to help Egyptian Presi- dent Hosni Mubarak settle a dispute with Begin over the town of Taba, south of Eilat, in the Sinai peninsula. A stipulation of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was that Israel would return the entire Sinai. However, an Israeli company had built a resort hotel in Taba, and Be- gin did not want to give it to Egypt. In February, Fisher was contact- ed by Egyptian Ambassador Ghorbal. The ambassador requested that Fisher go to Egypt and speak with Mubarak. Later that month, Fisher flew to Aswan. He was greeted with as much pomp and circumstance as a head of state, with a red carpet rolled out to the door of his jet. Fisher spoke with a number of Mubarak’s Cabinet ministers, and then he met with the Egyptian president.
Mubarak said: “I need to talk to Mr. Begin about Taba.”
After a half-century of deal making, Fisher’s response was under- standable. “Why don’t you call him on the phone?” he asked.
Despite Egypt’s formal treaty with Israel, Mubarak had his relationship with other Arab states to consider, and so he replied: “I cannot do that.” Fisher nodded. “All right,” he said. “What can I do?”
“You have influence in Israel,” Mubarak said. “Speak to Mr. Begin. Tell him that he agreed to return 100 percent of the Sinai, and Taba is part of that agreement. Taba has become such a symbol to Egyptians, you would think it was their ancient capital.”
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Mubarak suggested that the dispute be brought before an interna- tional arbitration board. That sounded reasonable, said Fisher, but he asked Mubarak why he didn’t try to improve the relationship between Egypt and Israel, adding that it would be better for all concerned if the Egyptian diplomatic connection to Israel was more cordial.
“Yes,” Mubarak said. “It would. I will talk to my ministers.” Fisher said: “I’ll speak to Mr. Begin.”
Fisher flew to Israel and spoke to the prime minister. Begin, who was reputed to be far fonder of talking than listening, heard Fisher out. Fisher suggested that arbitration was the answer. Begin said that he would take Fisher’s recommendation under advisement.
Back in the United States, Fisher updated Shultz and Ambassador Ghorbal on his meetings. He told Ghorbal to inform Mubarak that the Israelis would most likely opt for arbitration. Ultimately, several years later, after then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres agreed to internation- al arbitration, Taba was awarded to Egypt. Fisher, indulging in some wishful thinking, would comment that much of the friction over terri- tory in the Middle East would be more peacefully resolved if it were treated as business —like companies hondling over prices. Meanwhile, Middle East peace was nowhere in sight. In November 1982, Begin’s wife, Aliza, died. Her death, coupled with the worsening situation in Lebanon and the Israelis’ clamorous opposition to the war’s mounting casualties, took their toll on Begin, who sank into a depression from which he never completely recovered. Upon resigning in Septem- ber 1983, Begin retreated to his Jerusalem apartment at 1 Zemach Street and became, in the words of Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist, Thomas L. Friedman, “one of the most remarkable cases in political history: a man totally engaged in his country’s politics …[and] his nation’s great- est orator, who overnight became a man of silence.”
***
After twelve years as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Jew- ish Agency, Fisher’s tenure was ending. Having voted for Willkie in 1940 because he did not think any president, even FDR, should serve
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more than two four-year terms, Fisher believed that it was bad for the Agency to have the post of chairman so identified with one person. Yet knowing this did not make stepping down any easier. The reconstituted Jewish Agency was largely his creation and he had trouble letting go. On June 22, 1983, Fisher was honored at a dinner in the hall of the Jerusalem Great Synagogue. The next evening at the closing session of the Jewish Agency Assembly, he officially stepped down as BOG chairman, telling the audience that “as much as I may have given, I have received much more in return. I can’t help but think of my parents —how proud they would have been to know that their son would some day be privileged to stand in the hall of the Knesset, in Jerusalem, in the presence of the leadership of Israel and of world Jewry, to talk about Jewish unity.”
Later, his wistfulness was touched with a hint of anger when he told an interviewer, “This isn’t the end of my career. This is during my career.” That his prediction proved to be accurate did not lessen his sadness at relinquishing the chairmanship.
In recognition of Fisher’s achievement at the Agency, he was unan- imously elected founding chairman of the Board of Governors.
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Epilogue
THE DAY’S NOT ENDED
ON JUNE 25, 1984, Max Fisher was bar mitzvahed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The bar mitzvah is a ceremony in which a thirteen- year-old boy is commanded to accept his share of Jewish responsibility and becomes a man. Fisher, growing up in the Christian community of Salem, was sixty-three years late.
But there he was, at eight-thirty on a Monday morning, the sunlight hot and bright on the Kotel, the sacred Wall, the only standing vestige of the ancient Temple. Thirty-five of Fisher’s family and friends gath - ered. At the Wall, Fisher ran his hands over the stones and leaned for- ward to kiss them. Even in the simmering heat, the stones were cool. A journalist later reported that Fisher was crying when he put on his tallit, the fringed prayer shawl, and his tefillin, small boxes mounted on leather straps —one for the arm and one for the head —with bibli- cal verses written on parchment and enclosed in each box. Fisher was summoned to the Torah and recited the transliterated Hebrew prayers from an index card. Then, looking up, he said: “This is the most fortu- nate day of my life.”
Following the service, Marjorie hosted a brunch at the King David Hotel. For years, Marjorie had accompanied Max on his travels, and Max was aware of her sacrifice. In his final speech as chairman of the Board of Governors, he told the audience that his profound involve- ment with the Jewish Agency had “deepened my love and appreciation for my wife, Marjorie, who encouraged me, despite the strain on her.” By early November 1984, the strain of those years on Marjorie finally overwhelmed her. Although Marjorie says that she had been drinking alcohol excessively since the late 1950s, her consumption followed a
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regular — and for her, manageable — pattern. Each evening, at five o’clock, she began drinking vodka, and she drank until it was time for dinner at seven. But in November 1984, while Marjorie was in Palm Beach, she detected a change in her habit: she was now drinking from after dinner until she fell asleep. One sip made her drunk, proving that she no longer had any tolerance for alcohol.
“I would wake up in the morning,” says Marjorie, “and I had trou- ble remembering what had happened the night before. During the day I would forget things. I realized that my drinking was controlling my life. I was frightened, and one evening, I said to Max: ‘I’m in trouble.’” On the evening Marjorie told Max about her fears, two of their daughters, Mary Fisher and Julie Cummings, were at the house. During a discussion about available treatment, Mary convinced her mother to sign into the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, and phoned to make the arrangements. On November 21, 1984, Marjorie checked in.
She lived in a dormitory with twenty women. Every morning began with a meditation walk, then breakfast at seven, followed by lectures, group-therapy sessions, individual meetings with a counselor, films, recreation, and study and quiet times before dinner. At night, Marjorie says, she did homework “readings and written assignments that help you understand yourself and the disease of the alcoholism.”
The third week of Marjorie’s treatment was family week, and Max, four of their children, two sons-in-law, a daughter-in-law, and a grand- son arrived to attend sessions that taught them more about themselves and the difficulties created by alcohol. During these sessions, Max heard about the price, in detail, that his children had paid for his commitments to causes. Initially, as would be expected from someone so reticent, he was terribly uncomfortable with the process, his chair swiveled to the outside of the group. Marjorie Aronow recalled how her parents had never been around while she was growing up. Julie Cummings repeated what she had been saying for years: “I gave my father to the world.” Phillip Fisher was crying, and told Max how his immersion in business, philanthropy and politics had robbed him of a father, and he resented it. Max put his arm around Phillip and turned toward the group. His voice thick, he said: “I had no idea.” Mary Fisher recalls: “My father
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was in shock. We had always been scared to tell him how lonely we felt because he wasn’t there. We were amazed that he stayed around the center for five days. It was the longest time we ever had his undi - vided attention. It wasn’t just getting him to understand how we felt, but our whole family changed. We became more aware of each other, and what my mother had done, in Dad’s absence, to keep us together.” Adds Julie Cummings: “I give Dad a lot of credit for going through
it. He was just filled with emotion. After those sessions, he became a different person.”
So did Marjorie Fisher. Following one month of treatment at the Bet- ty Ford Center, she promised herself that she would never drink again.
***
Despite the feuding over the AWACS sale and the Reagan Plan, the relationship between the administration and the American Jewish com- munity was, for the most part, harmonious. Primarily, this was because President Reagan, always emotionally attached to Israel, also consid- ered the Israelis a vital asset in the conflict between the United States and Soviet Union. (Reagan was the first president to bestow formal approval on increased strategic cooperation between the two allies.) In addition, according to Hedrick Smith, author of The Power Game , Secretary of State Shultz became “disillusioned with the Arabs after seeing Lebanon — under Syrian pressure — wriggle out of the Leb- anon-Israel agreement that Shultz had mediated in May 1983. Since then, Shultz had worked to increase aid to Israel, and he had come to bank on the Israeli relationship —so much so that ... he wanted to in- sulate American-Israeli relations from political ups and downs.” Fisher was disappointed that the congenial relations between the ad- ministration and the Israeli government did not win electoral support for the president from the Jewish community. Although Reagan effortlessly won re-election, defeating Walter Mondale by 17 million votes, he at- tracted just 35 percent of Jewish voters —a 4 percent drop from 1980. In light of these results, Fisher, along with a coterie of Jewish Re- publicans, established the National Jewish Coalition. Headquartered in
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Washington, D.C., the NJC’s stated goals are to sensitize Republican decision makers to the concerns of Jews and to encourage Jewish par- ticipation in Republican politics. However, it is not a lobbying group or a PAC. In a sense, the coalition was simply the institutionalization of the work that Fisher had started in 1960. Fisher reasoned that even if most Jews didn’t cast their ballots for a Republican presidential can- didate, then at least the NJC would formally tie American Jewry to the GOP and, of greater importance, to Republican administrations.
***
During the second Reagan administration, peace in the Middle East remained close enough to fuel the dream and far enough away to frus- trate the dreamers. In 1984, when the Labor Party’s Shimon Peres be- came prime minister of Israel’s coalition government, a compromise seemed plausible. While the Likud Party —Peres’s partner in the co- alition —opposed resolving the Palestinian problem by relinquishing any part of the West Bank or transferring control to local Palestinians, Peres was more malleable. He felt that to cling to the entire West Bank would either force Israel to absorb 2 million Arabs or to institute de- portations. For Peres, neither choice was a viable option.
The coalition government did not diminish Fisher’s status as a quiet diplomat. Shimon Peres explains that this is because Fisher “occupies a position, not a post,” and, more important, because he is politically adept.
Peres states: “I compare Max to a ship that has both engines and sails. When Max has the wind with him, he uses his sails. When he needs to propel himself further, he uses his engines. Max is a very good sailor.”
Within the Israeli government, says Peres, Fisher was welcomed by the left and right wing. Fisher had long cultivated this flexibility — the key being that when it came to the inner machinations of Israel, he stayed staunchly apolitical.
“I’m not an Israeli citizen,” says Fisher, “so I don’t have to take a position on politics or anything else. The only thing I feel comfortable
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doing is offering advice based on the facts I might have. And I offer my services to both Labor and Likud. Besides, if it looks as though I’ve favored Likud, I’ll lose credibility with Labor. If I tell the Labor Party what they want to hear, then I’ll lose credibility with the Likud. So the best thing for me to do is make myself available.”
Although Fisher declined to take a public stand on how Israel should handle the Palestinians and the prospect of bartering land for peace, his opinion about what course would be best to follow was closer to the at- titude favored by Labor’s Peres than to the one of Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir. (Peres would be prime minister for two years and then switch jobs with Shamir, who was serving as foreign minister.) As far back as 1974, Fisher had privately warned members of the Israeli Cabinet that building settlements on the West Bank would have grave political consequences in Israel and the United States. If they didn’t offer some kind of a deal, then terms would be forced on them by geopolitical circumstances. Over the long haul, Fisher repeatedly told Israel’s lead- ers, the Israelis would find it difficult to hang on to all of the territory captured during the Six-Day War.
As soon as Peres was in office, he sought to use Fisher’s “credibility and clout.” He wanted Fisher to assure the Reagan administration that he was committed to seeking peace.
In a February meeting at Foggy Bottom, Fisher spoke to Secretary Shultz, who, while delighted with Peres’s resolve, was guarded about his chances. Fisher also asked Shultz if he would continue to pursue emigra- tion for Ethiopian and Soviet Jews. Shultz said that he would raise the topics with the Ethiopian government and the Russians. The secretary added that under no circumstances would the United States put Israel in the middle when it came to discussing the regional conflict with the Kremlin, and he asked Fisher to relay this promise to Peres. In addition, said Shultz, Fisher should tell Peres that when it comes to arms sales, Israel would be a priority and their security will in no way be hampered. During the spring and fall of 1985, Peres, in secret discussions with King Hussein of Jordan, attempted to arrange an accommodation that would give Jordan and Israel administrative powers over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with the final status of these areas to be determined in
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joint negotiations among the Israelis, Jordanians and local Palestin- ians. Meantime, no new Jewish settlements would be built on the West Bank, and Israel would return 500,000 acres of land to Jordan. Tragically, as has so often happened in the Middle East, violence scuttled the peace initiative. On October 1, 1985, Israeli F-16 jets at- tacked PLO headquarters in Tunis, killing nearly two dozen of Yasser Arafat’s staff. Less than a week later, four Palestinian terrorists hi- jacked an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, and in the process murdered an ailing sixty-four-year-old American, Leon Klinghoffer, throwing his body overboard.
Fisher, in a talk with Shultz, said that he still hoped a private deal could be struck between Israel and King Hussein. Shultz favored the quiet approach — unpublicized face-to-face meetings between heads of state — referring to it as applying the “Fisher Principle.” But just over a year later, on December 8, 1987, with the Likud’s Shamir now piloting the government and Peres ensconced at the foreign ministry, the intifada broke out in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army mobilized to quell the rioting Palestinians, and peace vanished amid clouds of tear gas and daily hailstorms of stones.
As the intifada swept through the territories, a potentially divisive issue arose between Israel and American Jewry. The issue was rooted in how the Israeli government would continue to interpret its Law of Return. The law gives every Jew the right to immigrate to Israel and be granted automatic citizenship. Determining exactly who qualifies as a Jew is another matter. According to Jewish law, Halakhah, a Jew is someone born to a Jewish mother or converted in accordance with halakhic rituals.
In order to secure a majority during what Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir describes as his “intricate and difficult coalition negotiations,” he courted representatives from four ultra-Orthodox religious parties. As a condition of joining Shamir’s coalition, the leaders of these par- ties demanded that only strictly Orthodox conversions be recognized by the Israeli government. Anyone who converted without complying to the letter of the law would not be considered Jewish and therefore have no right to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return.
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Initially, Shamir appeared to acquiesce to their demands. The re- action in the American Jewish community, observed The New York Times, was filled with “heat and outrage.” American Jews, 90 percent of whom are non-Orthodox, are the strongest and most generous sup- porters of Israel in the world. They are also exceedingly broad-mind- ed about conversions performed by rabbis from other streams of reli- gious life, namely Conservative and Reform. It seemed unimaginably painful that Israel would classify the rapidly expanding percentage of American converts to Judaism as Gentiles.
Fisher and a host of Jewish leaders flew to Israel to discuss the “who-is-a-Jew” debate with the prime minister. For Shamir, Fisher “represents the synthesis between the policies and aspirations of the United States and the goals and ideals of the Jewish people.” He says that since assuming the prime ministership, he has valued Fisher’s ability “to explain the outlook and philosophy of the Republican Party to the Israeli leadership, and by the same token, to convey to his Re- publican colleagues the sentiments and attitudes that exist in Israel.” In sum, then, Shamir respects Fisher for his political wisdom. This was fortunate because while several American leaders argued against the anti-democratic posture of letting the Orthodox demarcate the boundaries of Jewishness, Fisher’s advice to Shamir was based in the realpolitik. He told the prime minister that to alienate Jews in the United States would be unwise. The White House and Congress, said Fisher, when determining the breadth of their support for the Israelis, are mightily aware of how their Jewish constituents feel about Israel. Hence, to divide American Jewry would consequently divide support for Israel in Washington.
“Of course,” says Shamir, “the viewpoint of a friend like Max Fish- er was given very serious attention.”
The prime minister claims that he assured the leadership that “there was no intention whatsoever of delegitimizing any Jew.” In the end, Shamir installed his government without transfiguring the law and, for all practical purposes, the question of who is a Jew was returned to the lofty — and Fisher believed more appropriate — realm of theological speculation.
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***
In 1988, Fisher reached his eightieth birthday. Accolades rolled in from around the world. Letters arrived from family and friends, from presidents and prime ministers, senators and congressmen, governors, secretaries of state and foreign ministers, and Marjorie bound each one in a leather scrapbook. Having spent his political life out of the spotlight, Fisher felt gratified by the appreciative notes — signs that the discreet niche he had carved for himself was so widely recognized and respected by Washington insiders. Ronald Reagan’s last chief of staff, Howard H. Baker, wrote: “In the lobby just outside the White House mess, hangs a large portrait of you presenting an award to the president earlier this year. I think that as we celebrate your eightieth birthday ... it’s especially appropriate that the photograph occupy such a prominent spot in the busiest intersection of the West Wing.” Besides the letters, several parties were given in Fisher’s honor. Al Taubman hosted a stag luncheon at the Detroit Club, and fifty of Fish - er’s chums flew in from such distant spots as Alaska and England. There was a dinner cruise down the Detroit River — for family and some longtime friends — aboard the yacht Brownie’s III. Since 1988 was an election year and Fisher was now laboring in his seventh presi- dential campaign, it was only fitting that one of the celebrations should have a pragmatic political edge. In the early fall, President Reagan came to the Westin Hotel in Detroit and spoke to over 1,200 Repub- licans at a $1,000-a-plate dinner in Fisher’s honor. (Numerous guests paid $5,000 to have their pictures snapped with Fisher and the presi- dent.) Over $2 million was raised at the dinner, the proceeds going to the Michigan GOP.
Reagan was munificent in his remarks about Fisher, enumerating his efforts on behalf of the Republican Party and the United States, telling the audience that, “to put it simply, Max is a legend.” To demonstrate how much of a legend, Reagan recounted the following story.
At the 1980 Republican nominating convention in Detroit, when Reagan was selected to run for the presidency, hundreds of people con-
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verged on the platform to congratulate him. Adear friend, said Reagan, was watching the celebration on TV in a hotel lounge in California. He was enjoying it immensely. Suddenly, a man —in all probability a Detroiter —who was seated nearby, asked him: “Hey, mister, who’re all those people up on the podium with Max Fisher?”
“I didn’t mind [when my friend told me what happened],” said the president, “since Max is one of the few men who’s been around longer than I have.”
Reagan would honor Fisher again right before he left office by awarding him the Presidential Citizens Medal (along with such Amer- icans as James S. Brady, William F. Buckley Jr., Malcolm S. Forbes, Max M. Kampelman, Colin L. Powell and Edward Teller). The medal, the second highest honor a private citizen can receive, is given at the discretion of the president, As Reagan commented at the White House ceremony, Fisher was awarded the medal for his “generous acts of philanthropy, dedicated civic service and [for his leadership] of the Jewish community.”
Yet perhaps the greatest tribute that Fisher received in his eightieth year was an invitation to come to New Orleans in August and address the Republican National Convention. He had spent so many decades backstage, the prospect of standing before the national political foot- lights — even at this late date — was intimidating. He meticulously prepared his speech and flew to New Orleans a day early to rehearse it onstage. On the morning of August 15, Fisher waited in the wings while Maureen Reagan introduced him — with the typical bombast of political conventions — as a “great Republican and great Ameri- can.” Dressed in his trademark dark navy suit, a light blue shirt and slate-gray patterned tie, Fisher strode briskly out to face the delegates and television cameras. Resting his hands on the podium and leaning toward the audience, Fisher began by trumpeting the qualifications of George Bush for the presidency. Then, as in campaigns past, he set his sights on American Jewry.
“We Jews,” said Fisher, “are a people of the book, a people who treasure the written word. What, then, are we to think of a party whose platform ignores our basic communal needs and historical fears? Don’t
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take my word for it. Look at the Democratic platform yourself. And as you turn the pages, ask yourself, where is the Democratic platform condemning anti-Semitism? Where is the Democratic platform plank condemning the U.N. resolution on Zionism as racism? Where is the Democratic platform supporting the cries of Soviet Jewry? And where is the Democratic platform rejecting an independent Palestinian state? “My friends, the Democratic platform of past years contained much of the language you long to hear, but we cannot find it in that platform today. This spring seven state Democratic conventions vot- ed to recommend that the Democratic platform support an indepen- dent Palestinian state. Thank God, this motion was never put to vote. But next year, what?
“My friends, the Republican Party will not support an independent Palestinian state because it is wrong. Wrong not only for Israel, but also for America.... And I say to you, my fellow American Jews, come join with me, and with this great political party which shares your values, and which has labored steadily to earn your trust and respect. The Re- publican Party’s interests are your interests, its goals are your goals.” Fisher’s criticism of the Democrat’s agenda was not only based on his objection to a Palestinian state. After all, he wanted Israel and the Palestinians to live in peace. Obviously, this peace would include some sort of compromise. Yet throughout the 1988 campaign, Fisher sensed something more frightening in the Democratic camp than support for the Palestinians: he felt that the party had been commandeered by its vociferously anti-Semitic left wing.
On October 1, Fisher released a statement to the press charging that the campaign of the Democratic candidate for the presidency, Gov- ernor Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, was infected with “the poison of anti-Semitism.” Fisher was referring to three members of the Democratic National Committee —Ruth Ann Skaff of the Arab Amer- ican Institute in Texas for recognizing the Palestinian Liberation Orga- nization; Los Angeles City Councilman Robert Farrell for likening the Israelis to the Nazis in their treatment of Arabs on the West Bank; and the Reverend Willie Barrow, executive director of the Chicago-based Operation PUSH, who was a vocal fan of the black separatist, Louis
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Farrakhan. Among a flurry of anti-Semitic jabs, Farrakhan had referred to Judaism as a “gutter religion,” and told students at Michigan State University that Jews “suck the blood out of the black community, and [then] ... feel we have no right now to say something about it.”
Fisher thought it ironic that the first person to answer his charges was the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was campaigning for Dukakis in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In the 1984 campaign, Jackson had referred to NewYork City as “Hymietown.” He was also a defender of Farrakhan. (Maybe Jackson felt that he owed the Nation of Islam leader, since in 1984 Farrakhan threatened Milton Coleman, the journalist who re- ported Jackson’s characterization of New York, with death.) Acting as though he were above criticism on the subject of anti-Semitism, Jackson told the Detroit Free Press that Fisher’s accusations were “un- founded [and] unfair,” and that people should “focus on the guts of the Dukakis campaign,” adding that the governor’s “commitment to human rights is beyond reproach.”
In short order, Skaff denied Fisher’s charges; Farrell said he would sign any letter condemning anti-Semitism, though admitted that his earlier comments were excessive; and Barrow said that he was merely lauding Farrakhan’s aggressive posture on economic development in black communities.
Fisher was tired of leftists hiding their anti-Semitism behind their anti-Zionist rhetoric. He had been listening to it since the late 1960s. Nor did he have any tolerance for the older, more commonplace right-wing anti-Semitism. Fisher was working at Bush headquarters in Washington, D.C., when revelations surfaced that members of the Bush campaign had links to Nazi and other anti-Semitic organizations. Fisher contacted Bush campaign chairman Jim Baker and demanded that the men be fired.
In an interview with the Detroit Free Press, Fisher said: “When it was called to [my] attention that Nazi supporters and others were involved in the Republican campaign, we got rid of them immedi- ately. I just happen to think that should apply to [both] Republicans and [Democrats].”
On Election Day, Bush surpassed Dukakis by 8 percent of the pop-
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ular vote. The governor recovered quite a bit of lost ground against the vice president in the week before the election. But a New York Times/ CBS News Poll indicated that the voters had “made up their minds ear- lier and, by a large margin, for Mr. Bush.”
The vice president won 35 percent of the Jewish vote, which his- torically was above average. However, given the Democrats’ support for the Palestinians and the flagrant anti-Semitism by some celebrated members of its left wing, Fisher was surprised that Bush did not re- ceive more backing from Jews at the polls. The NJC, only four years old, had not made any substantial headway against the voting habits of Jews. However, once Bush took office in January 1989, there was another surprise in store for Fisher —this one more pleasant than his dismay over Jewish voting patterns. For it was in the wake of the inau- guration that Fisher was able to gauge just how far his role had evolved in the two decades since Nixon defeated Humphrey in 1968.
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George Klein, who in 1991 was a national co-chairman of the NJC, was brought to the United States from Austria as a child by his par- ents, who were fleeing the Nazis. His father, Stephen, an observant Jew, founded the New York-based Barton’s candy company. By 1973, George was executive vice president of the family business and had worked with Fisher on Nixon’s re-election campaign.
According to Klein, it was after 1968 that some small segments of the organized Jewish community became increasingly aware of “the importance of building a relationship with the White House.” How- ever, says Klein, “these type of links take time. A relationship with someone who becomes president is personal and must develop over a period of years. Legislators are continuously campaigning; they always need your help. A president only needs you once or twice in eight years.”
Fisher, notes Klein, understood this process. His achievements were already universally acknowledged by the organized elements of Amer- ican Jewry. But it became clear after the Ford administration that his
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rank as the Jewish Republican was recognized by those in the GOP who hoped —or managed —to become president.
Says Klein: “Max’s relationship to George Bush is a good exam- ple of this recognition. Although he and Bush are friendly, Max was not the Jewish Republican closest to Bush when he became president. Still, when it was time for the Jewish community and the administra- tion to talk, Max was the one who was called. And when he comes to a discussion at the White House, the president gives him an honored place — the chair to his right — and asks him to open the meeting. Max is a full-fledged political tradition, and Republican presidents have picked up on it.”
George Bush cannot recall when he first encountered Fisher, but says that he has known him for two decades. Fisher speculates that he met the future president in the 1970s, while Bush, already an ex-con- gressman from Texas and ex-ambassador to the United Nations, was Republican National Chairman. Bush describes his relationship with Fisher as “affectionate and respectful,” feelings that Fisher recipro- cates. Unlike his relationships with Nixon, Ford and Reagan, though, Fisher’s relationship with Bush was not grounded in common experi- ences. Sixteen years his senior, Fisher belonged to a different political generation: the seminal influence on Fisher’s early manhood was the Depression; for Bush, it was the Second World War. Nor could their backgrounds have been more different. Bush was the scion of aris- tocratic New Englanders, a graduate of Yale. His father, Prescott, a prosperous investment banker, was elected to the U.S. Senate from Connecticut in 1952. It was a far cry from Fisher’s beginnings as a Jewish immigrant’s son.
In the 1950s, Bush did make a respectable mark in the oil business. He may have heard of Fisher and Aurora, except by the time Bush became successful, Fisher was in the process of selling the company. The two men did share a similar style. Bush, as a Time magazine cover story declared on August 21, 1989, was “Mr. Consensus,” who kept his political cards close to his vest in an effort to prevent “coalitions from forming in opposition.” This was Fisher’s standard operating proce- dure for running organizations.
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Certainly, Bush was not blind to the assistance that Fisher could provide. As George Klein and others have observed, well before 1988 Fisher had fashioned his own permanent position. Still, this is not suf- ficient to account for the expansive role that Bush authorized him to play —a role that, to some degree, depends on the trust of, and access to, the president.
Of course, Bush recognizes Fisher’s standing among organized American Jewry. The president says that Fisher “understands the spe- cial circumstances that Israel faces in protecting its national security, and he represents the strong feelings and support of America’s Jewish population. He is a unique spokesman for U.S. policy in Israel, and for Israel’s policy in the United States.” But, for the president, Fisher’s standing is a partial requirement for his job. In fact, Bush concedes that it is only his “very personal relationship” with Fisher that “allows him to utilize Max as a personal emissary.”
So it stands to reason that something about Fisher appealed to the president beyond the politically expedient — some aspect of Fisher that created a bond between them. Perhaps it was the respect that many sons of privilege have for self-made men who achieve wealth and sta- tus and yet retain their willingness to pitch in and work hard. As a young man, Bush had passed up his father’s investment banking busi- ness, refusing to take full advantage of his privilege, and chased oil in Texas. This, at least, was an aspect of Fisher that then-Vice President Bush highlighted during a dinner at the Madison Hotel in Washington on February 28, 1986.
The dinner was given by Leonard and Suzanne Garment for Max and Marjorie. Henry Kissinger spoke, as did George Shultz and sever- al of the Fishers’ family and friends. In his introduction of Max, Vice President Bush said: “We know of his love for Israel. The joy of [So- viet refusnik Natan] Scharansky finally going home. The agony of the [Israeli] athletes [murdered at the 1972 Olympics] in Munich. All of these things. I think of Max. What it meant to him. And his being a kind of constant conscience to us in government. Now and in the past. “But there’s another dimension of Max,” said Bush, “that hasn’t been mentioned tonight. And that’s pure gut American politics. A mo-
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tel in northern Michigan with the ceilings so low you could hardly stand up. They don’t even give away free soap there. And here’s Max Fisher. Could have bought the thing twenty times over. Shaking hands with the precinct delegates and rolling up his sleeves and participating in that grass-roots course of American politics that really makes this country tick. And when you get going too high, he’ll bring you down to earth. When you’ve had the hell kicked out of you, he’ll lift you up. And we all feel that way about him. He’s our friend.”
Bush’s perception of Fisher as a friend was important, because by July 1989, as Bush faced what Fred Barnes of The New Republic la- beled “the first crisis of his presidency,” all was far from well between Washington and Jerusalem, and Fisher would find himself caught in the cross fire.
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On the night of July 28, Israeli commandos raided the southern Leba- nese village of Jibchit, abducting Sheik Abdul Karim Obeid, a leader of the Shiite fundamentalist Hizballah — the Party of God. Closely allied with Iran, Hizballah was holding most of the Western hostages. The Israeli government planned to swap Obeid for three Israeli sol- diers who had been taken prisoner years before in Lebanon. At a press conference hours after the abduction, Bush lashed out at Israel, saying: “I don’t think kidnapping and violence help the cause of peace.”
Two days later, a group representing Hizballah threatened to kill a captured leader of a U.N. observer team — U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel William Higgins —if Obeid was not released. Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin proposed to exchange Obeid and 150 Leba- nese Shiitie prisoners for the three Israeli POWs and all the Western hostages. Secretary of State Baker approved of Rabin’s counteroffer. But while Israel prepared to announce its terms, Hizballah released a videotape of Higgins, hanging by the neck, bound, blindfolded and dead. Hizballah then stated that American hostage Joseph Cicippio would be next if Obeid and an unspecified number of Palestinians and Lebanese guerrillas were not freed.
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Ultimately, the evidence suggested that Higgins had been murdered prior to Obeid’s abduction. For the moment, though, the White House was concerned about Cicippio and feared that the United States could be drawn into a military confrontation in Lebanon because of Israel’s foray. Angered by this possible scenario, the administration cabled the Israeli government, questioning its motivation, timing and strategy in kidnapping Obeid — all of it in language that one Israeli official portrayed to The Jerusalem Post as “almost insulting.” Israeli leaders, particularly Prime Minister Shamir, were so offended by the cable that they did not reply.
Fisher watched helplessly as the strain between the two allies in- creased. The White House issued a statement urging “all parties who hold hostages in the Middle East” to release them. Again, Israeli lead- ers were offended, since the statement appeared to equate Israel’s ab- duction of Obeid with the kidnappings carried out by Lebanese ex- tremists. Fisher was flabbergasted when Minority Leader Robert Dole asserted on the Senate floor that Israel had acted without regard for the lives of American hostages, adding that “a little more responsibility on the part of the Israelis would be refreshing.”
Cicippio was granted a reprieve by his captors. Meantime, Sham- ir claimed publicly that there was “no deterioration whatsoever” in relations between Israel and the United States, and that the rumors of a crisis between Jerusalem and Washington were “wrong.” Fish- er disagreed, and after the president’s spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, told the press that “many people” in the White House concurred with Dole’s statement, Fisher decided it was time to schedule a talk with the president.
On August 8, five Jewish leaders met with Bush: Seymour Re - ich, chairman of the Presidents Conference; Malcolm Hoenlein, the Conference executive director; Ed Levy, president of AIPAC; George Klein and Richard Fox from the National Jewish Coalition, and Fisher (whose official title was now honorary chairman of the NJC). With Bush was his chief of staff, John H. Sununu, Vice President Dan Quayle, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and several other aides. Nailing down the talk with Bush was a coup, since the White
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House, worried about appearing to side with Israel’s U.S. supporters, had not even listed the meeting on the president’s daily schedule. Bush opened by saying that he was anxious to hear from the group. He did want to let them know that he was terribly troubled by the hos- tage situation. He said that, personally, he felt a tremendous responsi- bility for the Americans being held in Lebanon. And, quite simply, be- cause Israel had abducted Obeid, their lives were now in more danger than ever before.
An observer at the meeting, who prefers not to be identified, later said that when Bush finished there was an uncomfortable silence — people shifting in their seats. The president had drawn a line. Although he had said that he was more than willing to listen to another perspec- tive, he wanted the group to know that his main priority here was not geopolitics, but the safety of the hostages.
Bush waited for a response. According to Seymour Reich, in meet- ings with government officials “Max never tried to make himself the focal point and always deferred to the head of the Presidents Confer- ence. He wanted the administration to know that this was coming from the community, not from him.” But now, instead of answering Bush, Reich said: “Mr. President, I think we’d all like to hear from Max.” Fisher began by stating that this delegation considered itself a friend
of the president. But the community was upset about Dole’s comments and Fitzwater’s support. Both men had created a distortion in the minds of the American public and energized feelings against Israel that were contrary to the best interests of the United States. He cited a Washing- ton Post poll that showed a majority of Americans considered Dole’s statements to border on the intemperate. The administration should re- member that America’s long-term strategic interests were with Israel. The rift between Washington and Jerusalem was unnecessary and the tensions counterproductive.
Bush replied that he was aware of the tensions, though the U.S. relationship with Israel transcended any momentary distress. He then discussed the lack of communication between the United States and the Israelis, saying that it would be helpful to know what they were up to in Lebanon, especially if American lives were on the line. He
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guaranteed that he would not abide any irreparable breaches between the two governments while he was president —he would do what was necessary to shore up the relationship. He said he was not going to shift U.S. policy because the views of a particular government in Is- rael did not coincide with the way the administration looked at things. Bush was referring to the Likud Party and not just to their activities in Lebanon, but their policy of continuing to build settlements on the West Bank. For several minutes, the president spoke knowledgeably about the political strife in Israel between Likud and Labor.
Then members of the delegation answered the president, touching on the anger that had been engendered in the Jewish community by the comparison of the Obeid abduction to the Hizballah kidnappings. They also said that though this may be the age of glasnost, the Soviet Union had not radically altered its tactics in the Middle East; the Kremlin still supported terrorism and sold weapons to Israel’s enemies.
Bush listened, then intimated that what he truly wanted was for the delegation to pass along the message to Shamir that the breakdown in communication between the United States and Israel was deeply dis- tressing to the White House and should not continue. Fisher appreciated that, in approach and personality, Bush and Shamir were not the perfect couple. Bush was highly verbal, relying on personal contacts that he nur- tured in long conversations over the phone. Shamir was quiet, a listener, and more formal; he would not call when a note would do.
Bush again reassured the group that the U.S. relationship with Is- rael would remain on solid ground. As the meeting broke up, Fisher lingered, talking with the president. He reiterated the spot that Shamir was in —how strongly the Israeli public felt about the return of their prisoners. He doubted that the prime minister had intended to back Bush into a political comer or to endanger the hostages. He would speak to Shamir, but he wouldn’t push him. Bush thanked Fisher and they shook hands.
“Those are handsome cuff links,” Fisher said to the president. They were gold and engraved with the presidential seal. Bush smiled, re- moved the cuff links from his shirt and handed them to Fisher. “They’re yours, Max,” the president said.
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The meeting was officially over.
The next day, Shamir telephoned Bush. Their conversation was cordial. They discussed, in general terms, the hostage situation and how Israel expected to address it. But, The New York Times reported, Bush later mentioned to some associates that he did not get specific an - swers to his questions. Shamir followed up his phone call with a letter that did provide some explanation for Israel’s abduction of Obeid, but again he did not directly answer the president.
Due to differing objectives and styles, the relationship between Bush and Shamir would not be easygoing. Their personal uneasiness, however, would create a greater opportunity for Fisher to work the diplomatic back-channel.
Bush, though, is reluctant to admit the existence of an unofficial channel. He says that what Fisher does is “not a matter of back-chan- neling, because there is no substitute for our diplomacy abroad. But it is important to have private citizens to help explain our position in Israel. And Max Fisher can provide personal and direct explanations for our policies in his discussions with Jewish leaders. He has been helpful in our discussions with Prime Minister Shamir for some time.” Shamir, like Bush, is hesitant to characterize Fisher’s work as op- erating in a back-channel. The prime minister states that “there is the closest contact between the governments of the United States and Israel through their respective ambassadors and embassy personnel, and by means of fairly frequent meetings between ministers from both coun- tries. There is also close contact with members of Congress, the media and the public. Accordingly, almost all the needs are served through the regular diplomatic channels. However, because of the open, demo- cratic nature of the two societies, there are occasions when the person- al intervention of a man of the stature of Max Fisher is helpful on both sides of the ocean. This has been the role of Max Fisher throughout the years, and his contribution has been invaluable.”
By February 1990, when Fisher went to Israel for eight days to at- tend meetings at the Jewish Agency, the hostage crisis had receded. But a perpetual dispute between the United States and Israel was about to boil over. The dispute centered on Israel’s ongoing settlement of
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the West Bank. The Bush administration was trying to arrange talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. Invariably, such arrangements threw the matter of land into bold relief. But now, with the Soviet Union’s more flexible posture toward emigration, hundreds of thou - sands of Soviet Jews were streaming into Israel. This highlighted the question of where the Israeli government intended to settle them. Thus, during Fisher’s visit, the settlement issue topped the agenda. He met privately three times with Prime Minister Shamir, twice with Deputy Prime Minister Peres, and held two long conversations with Defense Minister Rabin.
As Fisher later told Bush, the Israeli leaders promised him that there was “no government policy to settle [the Russian Jews] in the West Bank or Gaza and no new incentives for them to go there.... Prime Minister Shamir assured me that no American money and no new Is- raeli government money would be spent on absorbing them in the ter- ritories.” Shimon Peres pointed out to Fisher that “no new settlements could be built without the approval of the Labor Party Cabinet minis- ters and that they would not agree to any such decision.”
Fisher also told the president that while there were some small ex- isting incentives for settlement in the territories, they “were unlikely to have a significant impact on where the Soviet Jews actually settle. In my judgment, however, the cancellation of these incentives is more than is politically feasible for the PM in today’s environment.”
One of Fisher’s talks with Shamir focused on the peace process. Shamir said that he was committed to dealing with the Palestinians, but was “being distracted by the turmoil in his own party.” He had been working closely with Rabin, in private consultations. The prime min- ister felt that he had 65 percent of the Likud behind him. He preferred to consolidate his political base before taking any large steps. After listening to the prime minister, Fisher says that he told him, “in very clear terms,” that it “would be difficult for the United States to keep everybody in place behind his initiative if he did not take a positive decision now.”
Several weeks later, Fisher gave Bush his assessment of Shamir’s willingness to pursue peace. “This is a fateful and very difficult deci -
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sion for Israel to make,” said Fisher. “For the first time in the history of the state, Israel will be legitimizing the Palestinians as its negotiating partner. I sense that the country is swinging behind the idea of making this decision, but we should expect significant political fallout. I am confident that there will be positive movement soon. When the PM moves forward, however, he will need your public support.”
When Fisher returned from his February trip to Israel, he organized his observations in writing for the president. Before he could communi- cate with Bush, though, the situation underwent a radical transformation. At a press conference in early March, the president stated that he did “not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem.” Casting doubts on Israeli sovereignty over Jeru- salem, was, in the words of The New York Times, “a departure from usual Washington practice.” East Jerusalem, along with the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, had been wrested from Jordan after King Hussein ordered the shelling of West Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. Of- ficially, the United States has never recognized the Israeli annexation of this land, so technically the U.S government sees East Jerusalem as occupied territory. However, U.S. administrations have protested Israeli expansion into the West Bank territories while tolerating it in the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.
Bush’s pronouncement caused a furor in Israel, especially at the present moment, because the government, split between Likud and Labor, was deliberating over whether to participate in American-spon- sored negotiations with the Palestinians. Organized American Jewry was also taken aback by Bush’s statement. And since Fisher was going to speak to the president anyway about his February visit, he added an addendum to his written report. While in Israel, Fisher had spent a considerable amount of time in Jerusalem with Mayor Teddy Kollek, touring the housing sites where some Soviet Jews would be settled. The sites in the eastern part of the city, Fisher assured Bush, were on “uninhabited, government-owned land.” Kollek was concerned about any infringement of the rights of Jerusalem’s Arab residents.
It was a mistake, Fisher suggested to Bush, for the administration to link Jerusalem to the issue of settlements.
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“I know that your position, and that of the Republican Party, is what- ever the outcome of negotiations, Jerusalem should remain unified. If that is the case, it cannot be treated in the same way as settlements in the West Bank. Jerusalem requires a political compromise, but it is not subject to territorial compromise. This is the consensus issue in the American Jewish community and Israel.”
According to Fisher, the most profound impact of the president’s linkage was on the ever-fragile potential for peace.
“I do not think it is politically wise,” said Fisher, “to adopt a posi- tion that Jews should not settle in Jerusalem. At a very delicate stage in the peace process, it can only produce a strong negative response in Israel and the American Jewish community. They remember what hap- pened to Jewish holy sites before 1967 despite international guarantees given in 1948.”
Then, tactfully, Fisher closed his remarks with a reference to Bush’s statement: “In view of what has happened, it will take considerable patience and work to keep the peace process on track.”
In a brief handwritten note dated March 8, Bush thanked Fisher for his comments, calling them “most helpful.” Unfortunately, less than a week later, Fisher’s prediction about the dubious political wisdom of challenging Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem proved accurate. For Fisher, the turn of events was a prime illustration of how rapidly events could spiral downward in the Middle East when the Israelis perceived — justifiably or not — that they had been abandoned by their most powerful ally, the United States.
On March 13, the disagreement between Labor and Likud over peace talks with the Palestinians came to a head. Wary of a U.S. ad- ministration that appeared to deem Jerusalem up for grabs, Shamir rejected the terms suggested by the United States for entering into a dialogue with the Palestinians. Consequently, the government collapsed. Tensions escalated. On May 20, a deranged Israeli mur- dered seven Arab laborers. Rioting ensued between Palestinians and Israeli security forces. Seven died; five hundred were injured, and the violence spilled from the territories to towns inside Israel. On May 30, an attack on an Israeli beach by terrorists in speedboats
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was repulsed. PLO chairman Yasser Arafat denied that his organi- zation was involved.
What ensued, Fisher thought, was depressingly predictable. With their security under attack, Israelis swung to the political right. By June 8, Prime Minister Shamir assembled a government —the most hawkish in Israel’s history —which was committed, in principle, to developing Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. This was, Fisher knew, precisely what the Bush administration had hoped to avoid. Two weeks later, the president suspended talks with the PLO because Arafat would not condemn the recent terrorist attack. It was too little, too late. Israel was already politically isolated. And another opportunity was lost. Fisher continued working to facilitate a produc- tive dialogue between Bush and Shamir. But on August 2„when Iraqi tanks rumbled into Kuwait and Bush ordered U.S. forces to Saudi Arabia, it was obvious to Fisher that the Middle East cards would be shuffled again.
As Desert Shield gave way to Desert Storm, Fisher traveled to Je- rusalem for meetings. He watched from the balcony of his room at the King David Hotel as Iraqi Scuds sparked in the night skies above Is- rael. He spoke with Shamir and admired the prime minister’s political courage for not retaliating against Saddam Hussein and thereby pre- serving the U.S.-Arab coalition. What Fisher found most amazing was that throughout the Gulf War, Soviet Jews kept landing in Tel Aviv; even the threat of gas attacks did not deter them; they were given gas masks as they stepped off the planes.
From August 2, 1990, until February 27, 1991, when Bush halted the allied offensive against Iraq, 137,313 Russian Jews poured into Is- rael. Fisher had had a hand in opening the gates. It was among the few of his contributions that was known outside the top levels of govern- ment —a contribution that led Board of Governors chairman Mendel Kaplan to announce to the Jewish Agency that “in one decisive step, Max Fisher has changed the course of Jewish history.”
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In 1979, the Soviet Union permitted 51,320 of its Jews to emigrate. Sixty percent of them came to the United States, while the rest went to Israel. Vastly outnumbered by their Arab enemies, Israel was not only proud to rescue these Jews from the oppressive conditions in the Sovi- et Union, they also needed immigrants, particularly ones like the Rus- sians, who were, as a rule, educated and equipped with a multitude of skills. But as global competition between the United States and the So- viet Union fermented, the Kremlin choked off Jewish emigration. Ad- ditionally, those who applied for exit visas often lost their jobs; many were harassed by the KGB. Between 1980 and 1987, only 46,206 were permitted to leave, nearly all of them bolting to America. Then, with the ascendancy of Mikhail Gorbachev, the situation changed. During the spring of 1988, Soviet Jews were leaving Russia at the rate of approximately 1,000 a month. By fall, the number had doubled. The Israeli government was angry since the emigrants were, for the most part, only able to exit the Soviet Union because they held visas to Israel. Then, once the emigrants reached Vienna or traveled on to one of the European holding centers — for example, Ladispoli, in Rome they applied for entry to the United States. As a result, the centers were jammed with people waiting to enter America. And Gorbachev was promising that more Jews could emigrate,
In 1988, Carmi Schwartz was the executive vice president of the Council of Jewish Federations. He saw the growing problem and phoned Fisher. What were they going to do about the Jews in Rome? At first, Fisher turned to Secretary of State Shultz for assistance.
Says Schwartz: “Shultz was an enormous help. He cared like hell; he brought up Soviet Jewry at every encounter with the Russians. It was always on his agenda: one, because he felt deeply about it; he went to Moscow during Passover, had a seder in the embassy and invited a group of refusniks to join him. And two, I felt Soviet Jewry was important to Shultz because of his relationship with Max. He had a special friendship with Max. And it was ever-present.”
That summer, the director of the CJF’s Washington action office, Mark Talisman, called Schwartz, warning him that the Soviet Jews, al- ready caught in a logjam, were about to become even more backed up.
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Recalls Talisman: “In July 1988, Attorney General Edwin Meese sent a letter to National Security Adviser Colin Powell. Essentially, the letter said that the 1980 Refugee Act needed to be followed in regard to all refugees — including Soviet Jews. Now, Jews who were virtu- ally prisoners in the Soviet Union would be in the position of having to prove on a case-by-case basis that they were being persecuted. This happened as the numbers started to soar, and the whole system got boxed up.”
Schwartz instructed Talisman to contact Fisher.
“Max attended meeting upon meeting to try and get this straight- ened out,” says Talisman. “The crisis was a serious one. By October 1988, we were beginning to organize, but it was an election year; many people in Congress were on the road campaigning. We weren’t able to get anyone to focus on the situation until January 1989, when the Bush administration came in. [Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S.] Ea- gleburger understood the idiocy of it. Thousands of Soviet Jews were stuck in Rome; it was costing organized American Jewry $8 per person —over $300,000 a day; it was a waste. And the human wreckage was really tragic. Refusniks who had suffered horribly were being ordered by the U.S. government to report in detail how they had a well-found- ed fear of persecution. Had Kafka been alive, he’d only have to be a stenographer.”
The Bush administration wanted to help. But annual immigration slots are limited and there were budgetary constraints. Under the Ref- ugee Act, the United States funds immigrants at $935 per head a year. The American Jewish community was covering the rest of the cost. During 1989, the Soviet Union issued exit visas to 71,196 Jews — up from 18,965 the previous year. At the holding centers, the situation was becoming intolerable —grim reminders of the displaced persons camps that rose in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Meanwhile, the U.S. administration was pressing Jewish organizations to assist them in fix - ing acceptable immigration numbers.
Fisher felt that putting that question to a broad spectrum of Jew- ish organizations was a disaster-waiting-to-happen, because where the Soviet Jews should reside —in the United States or Israel —was the
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subject of an explosive debate between American Jews and Israelis. Martin S. Kraar, who succeeded Carmi Schwartz as the executive vice president of the CJF in the fall of 1989, explains the American view: “The position that the majority of us took was that the Soviet Jews were entitled to decide where they wanted to live. We may have preferred that they go to Israel, but we were not going to rescue them from an oppressive society, bring them into a free one, and then make their first personal decision for them. Nor once they entered the United States were we going to allow them to become destitute. Our mandate is to help Jews and so our services were made available to them.” Juxtaposed to this stance is the one espoused by Mendel Kaplan, a South African who now spends six months a year in Israel and serves as the chairman of the Jewish Agency Board of Governors.
“We, in Israel,” says Kaplan “do not believe in Soviet Jews going to America —in moving them from one diaspora to another. To us, the freedom of choice that American Jews spoke about was a negation of Jewish leadership. I believe that Jews should have a right to move any- where they want. But they should not use public Jewish funds to do it. The Soviet Jews were being referred to as refugees, which means that the person is politically persecuted and has nowhere else to go. But every Jew in the world does have a place —Israel. The word ‘refugee’ is offensive to us because Israel is their home.”
Inevitably, this conflict ignited a firestorm among the leading phil - anthropic institutions of Jewish life.
“We ended up with over 35,000 people stacked up in Rome,” says Martin Kraar. “The Jewish Agency was yelling at the federations, and the federations, upset about the cost of maintaining Rome, were yell- ing at the Jewish Agency because they weren’t in Rome trying to con- vince people to come to Israel.”
With conditions swiftly deteriorating, Fisher embarked on a course that was unprecedented for him and ran contrary to his reputation as the foremost consensus builder in the organized Jewish world. Before presenting the dilemma to the established organizations for open de- bate, Fisher invited Mark Talisman, Mandell (Bill) L. Berman, presi- dent of the Council of Jewish Federations, and Shoshana Cardin, head
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of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, to form a quartet with him. Dubbing it the “No Name Committee,” Fisher took this intimate representative body to talk with the administration about clearing the Soviet Jews through the bureaucracy.
The motivation for Fisher’s decision was a blend of pragmatism and personal considerations. On a practical level, Fisher believed that the tug-of-war over where the Russian emigrants belonged would prevent organized Jewry from actually seeing them through to safety. Because of the guilt over the Holocaust — the pledge that it would never happen again — rescuing Soviet Jewry was among the most impassioned concerns of Jewish organizations. During the Nixon ad- ministration, Fisher had seen these emotions gather the community behind the Jackson-Vanik legislation —in his view, a disastrous er- ror in judgment. As Fisher had vainly tried to point out to organized American Jewry in the 1970s, the Kremlin was bound to react by cutting off emigration. This was the eventual outcome, and Fisher promised himself to avoid mishaps arising from the raw emotional- ism of the circumstances.
Personally, Fisher did not want this opportunity to skate past him. Over the last several years, he had felt the passing of time as never before. In September 1987, Henry Ford II had died. Fisher had lost an irreplaceable presence in his life. Every morning, as he sat in his office in the Fisher Building, he would glance up from his desk to look at the framed picture of his friend that he kept nearby. The photograph was taken by Ford’s wife, Kathy, in Henry’s final months, and for Fisher it emphasized how the years had sped past. At the age of eighty, Fisher knew, second chances were scarce. The Soviet Union was undergoing an avalanche of change; anti-Semitism was on the rise; Gorbachev was staring at domestic challenges that defied the imagination; his grip on the reins of power was by no means steady; and the doors could shut on Russian Jewry as suddenly as they had opened. Fisher wanted this settled — now.
Bill Berman remembers that one morning Fisher phoned and said that he needed him in Washington. That was Berman’s introduction to the No Name Committee.
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“At our first meeting with Deputy Secretary of State Eagleburg - er, he came in, saw Max sitting in an easy chair, smiled and said: ‘I know where the power is here.’ Everyone laughed. It was obvious how friendly they were. That meeting was very cordial. We explained that we hoped to get the State Department in synch with Congress. The need was obvious: we had close to 40,000 Soviet Jews stuck in the pipeline, and they wanted to enter the United States —not Israel.” For Shoshana Cardin, the contribution of the No Name Committee was twofold.
“The administration offered us approximately 25,000 slots,” says Cardin. “We told them that we needed 40,000 so we could reunify families, and that the Jewish community could afford to pay for that number and keep the immigrants from becoming wards of the state. Financially, we did not want to overburden the federations. Many of the Soviet Jews who were coming here neither had anchor families or resources. Then we asked the U.S. government to press the Kremlin to let Soviet Jews apply for exit visas to either America or Israel. Max was convinced that first of all, Israel needed the immigrants, while the American Jewish community did not; two, that the Soviet Jews would be lost if they came here, whereas in Israel they would be returned to the Jewish people. The whole thing could have taken years to work out. It was a stroke of genius in that Max was able to do this in a rela- tively short time.”
The U.S. government agreed to accept 40,000 Russian Jews — nearly all that were clogging the pipeline. This meant that if you were a Jew in the Soviet Union and chose to emigrate, then another year would pass before you would even be considered for entrance into the United States. Adual-track system was then instituted by the Kremlin; Russian Jews now had a choice between applying for a visa to the United States or Israel.
Stanley Horowitz, who, as head of the United Jewish Appeal, would assist with the fund-raising efforts on behalf of Soviet Jews, identifies the net results of these changes: “The true impact of what Max did was now the Jews in Russia had to decide where they wanted to go when they were in the Soviet Union. They could no longer take an Israeli
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