To travel from the United States to Israel is to go from a place of little history and vast space to one of little space and vast history; and from one where serious international conflicts seem far away to one where they are visible from a hotel room.
Two members of Wisconsin’s delegation to Congress said these were among the most important things they learned when they visited Israel last month with their colleagues.
Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Madison) and Mark Green (R-Green Bay) went on trips sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, an affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby. Baldwin went with a group of 29 House Democrats on Aug. 3-9, Green with a group of 19 House Republicans on Aug. 24-30.
Both of them spoke of time and space as among the most powerful impressions of Israel. “When you think of learning American history, you’re thinking in centuries,” said Baldwin. “When you talk about the history of the region there, you’re talking in millennia.”
Green said that in his experience he once considered “a 60-year-old house to be ‘ancient.’” He was startled to hear his guide say, “Here, anything after the fourth century A.D. is modern.”
As for space, Green said, “As we walked and drove the streets of Jerusalem, we realized how close everything is. From my hotel room I could see Ramallah [where Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s headquarters is located].”
“What I gained is a better appreciation of just how real and close at hand this conflict is for Israelis in their everyday lives,” he said.
To Baldwin, “While you may realize on an intellectual basis that the security issues are unfolding in close proximity, it’s another thing to walk around Jerusalem and to travel through the West Bank and really understand that these locations are quite proximate.”
This was just one of the ways “the trip really added context to the issues I’ve been engaged in as a policy-maker,” she said.
Broad perspectives
In July, the left-wing Tikkun magazine sent e-mails warning that AIPAC would make sure the visiting Congress members “will be indoctrinated with the perspective of the Israeli right-wing.” However, Baldwin and Green said the range of perspectives they encountered were “very valuable and very broad,” in Baldwin’s words.
Green said one of the trip’s highlights for him was a dinner with Salam Fayad, the P.A.’s finance minister and a man “many representatives of the Israeli government believe is one sign of hope for the future. He is an American-educated economist trying desperately to root out corruption and straighten out the finances of the P.A. That is one of the hopeful signs that we [in Congress] want to reinforce” [see related story page 3].
Both also had a chance to meet Israelis of corresponding political orientations. For Baldwin one of her visit’s highlights was a Sabbath dinner with Rabbi Michael Melchior, a Knesset member of the Labor Party, which is roughly equivalent to the Democrats in policies and in currently being the opposition to the governing party.
In Melchior’s post-dinner remarks, “Some of the linkages he pointed out made a lot of sense to me as a progressive Democrat,” she said. He spoke about how Israel “can’t focus alone on building up defense and security,” and said “focusing on domestic policies, fighting poverty, responding to health care needs, responding to conditions of despair in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza are important components in building toward a peaceful future.”
Green found Israel’s current finance minister, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party, to be politically simpatico. “He talked about the steps the current administration is trying to take to deal with Israel’s dire economic situation,” which include tax relief measures and transferring government-owned economic activities to private ownership. “Those are steps Americans would look for ways to reinforce,” Green said.
Baldwin said what she learned would have mostly indirect effect on her work on the House’s budget and judiciary committees; but the chance to put Israel and the Middle East “in context … will inform my votes on numerous issues that come before Congress.”
Green, however, serves on the international relations committee, and “we deal with the Mideast all the time…. There are probably few nations and regions more important for a member of that committee to visit than Israel right now.”
And one of the powerful impressions he will bring back to that committee is “the sense of optimism Israelis have” about the future. “In the face of the obvious security and economic challenges, the Israelis I met have a tremendous sense of pride in what they have accomplished, but also hopefulness about what they can accomplish. That’s very inspiring.”
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