These days, like many Israelis and American Jews, I find myself in a precarious and painful situation.
Those of us who believe that the nuclear agreement just signed between world powers and Iran is dangerously misguided are now compelled to criticize Israel’s best friend and ally, the government of the United States.
In standing up for what we think is right, for both our people and the world, we find ourselves at odds with the power best able to protect us and promote stability.
And instead of joining the hopeful chorus of those who believe peace is on the horizon, we must risk giving the impression that we somehow prefer war.
As difficult as this situation is, however, it’s not unprecedented. In the early 1970s, Republican President Richard Nixon inaugurated his policy of detente with the Soviet Union with an extremely ambitious aim: to end the Cold War by normalizing relations between the two superpowers.
Among the obstacles Nixon faced was the Soviet Union’s refusal to allow on-site inspections of its weapons facilities.
Moscow didn’t want to give up its main advantage, a closed political system that prevented information and people from escaping and prevented prying eyes from looking in.
And so as Nixon moved to grant the Soviet Union most-favored-nation status, and with it the same trade benefits as US allies, Democratic Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington proposed what became a historic amendment, conditioning the removal of sanctions on the Soviet Union’s allowing free emigration for its citizens.
By that time, tens of thousands of Soviet Jews had asked permission to leave for Israel.
Jackson’s amendment sought not only to help these people but also and more fundamentally to change the character of detente, linking improved economic relations to behavioral change by the USSR.
Without the free movement of people, the senator insisted, there should be no free movement of goods.
The Republican administration in the White House objected furiously. This put Jewish activists inside the USSR in a difficult position.
We feared opposing our greatest benefactor, yet we wanted freedom for all Soviet Jews, and we believed that would result only from unrelenting pressure to bring down the Iron Curtain.
This is why, despite the clear risks and KGB threats, we chose to publicly support the amendment.
American Jewish organizations also faced a difficult choice. They were reluctant to speak out against the US government and appear to put the “narrow” Jewish interest above the cause of peace.
Yet they also realized that the freedom of all Soviet Jews was at stake, and they actively supported the policy of linkage.
Now all that was needed for the amendment to become law was enough principled congressional Republicans willing to take a stand against their own party in the White House.
It was a Republican senator from New York, Jacob Javits, who, spurred by a sense of responsibility for the Jewish future, helped put together the bipartisan group that ensured passage.
The amendment made the principle of linkage the backbone of the free world’s relations with the USSR. The decaying Soviet economy couldn’t support an arms race or maintain tolerable conditions without credit and support from the United States.
The United States would not only help free millions of Soviet Jews as well as hundreds of millions of others but also pave the way for the regime’s eventual collapse.
Today, an American president has once again sought to achieve stability by removing sanctions against a brutal dictatorship without demanding that the latter change its behavior.
And once again, a group of outspoken Jews — no longer a small group of dissidents in Moscow but leaders of the state of Israel, from the governing coalition and the opposition alike — are sounding an alarm.
Of course, we’re reluctant to criticize our ally and to so vigorously oppose an agreement that purports to promote peace.
But we know we’re again at a historic crossroads, and that the United States can either appease a criminal regime — one that supports global terror, relentlessly threatens to eliminate Israel and executes more political prisoners than any other per capita — or stand firm in demanding change in its behavior.
A critical question is, who, if anyone, will have the vision and courage to be the next Sens. Jackson and Javits.