There are hopeful signs regarding the Bush administration’s policy toward Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Unlike his predecessor, President Bush refrained from interfering in the Israeli election and has said that he will not impose deadlines on the Arab-Israeli negotiating process. He has called upon Yasir Arafat to publicly condemn anti-Jewish terrorism, in Arabic, to Arab audiences. And he has used the U.S. veto at the United Nations to block an anti-Israel resolution.

At the same time, there are troubling signs coming from the State Department–it has criticized Israel’s counter-terrorism tactics; it has pressured Israel to give funds to the Palestinian Authority, even though the PA is waging war against the Jewish State; it has implied a moral equivalence between Palestinian Arab aggression and Israeli self-defense; it has not yet offered a single reward for information leading to the capture of Palestinian Arab killers of Americans, even though it routinely offers such rewards to capture terrorists who kill Americans elsewhere around the world.

There seems to be a struggle underway between competing views within the administration regarding Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. In this context, the selection of America’s next ambassador to Israel is especially important. The ambassador’s reports to Washington play a crucial role in shaping the administration’s policies.

That’s why it is so disappointing to hear that veteran State Department official Daniel Kurtzer is a leading candidate for the post of ambassador to Israel.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with someone who has had considerable personal experience with Kurtzer: Yitzhak Shamir, who served as prime minister of Israel for most of the period from 1983-1992. Mr. Shamir told me: “Kurtzer frequently pressured Israel to make one-sided concessions to the Arabs; he constantly blamed Israel for the absence of Mideast peace, and paid little or no attention to the fact that the Palestinians were carrying out terrorist attacks and openly calling for the destruction of Israel.”

In fact, Kurtzer’s bias goes all the way back to his graduate school days. In his Ph.D. dissertation (Columbia University, 1976), Kurtzer said Israel’s counter-terror actions were the “catalysts to interstate violence,” and blamed Israel for “the radicalization of the Palestinians to violence” (p.253). Throughout the dissertation, Kurtzer referred to Palestinian Arab terrorists as “guerrillas,” not as terrorists–even though he was discussing the groups that carried out such horrific massacres as the Lod Airport massacre of Puerto Rican tourists and the slaughter of Israeli athletes (including an American) at the Munich Olympics.

After joining the State Department, Kurtzer had the opportunity to put his opinions into practice. According to the New York Times (January 13, 1989), during 1988, when the PLO was engaged in constant terrorism against Israel, Kurtzer was insisting “that the PLO under Yasir Arafat was moving in a moderate direction.” Kurtzer became “a key figure in the process of formulating” the U.S. decision to recognize the PLO in December 1988. (Kurtzer’s claim of PLO “moderation” proved to be completely mistaken, because the PLO continued its terrorism and in early 1990, the U.S. broke off its dealings with Arafat.)

In 1992, syndicated columnist Douglas Bloomfield revealed (Washington Jewish Week, December 17, 1992) that in a recent meeting, Kurtzer “lectured Israeli negotiators” that “they should make additional concessions to the unresponsive Palestinians. Kurtzer and the other Jewish State Department officials told the Israelis they were speaking to them as ‘family’ and in their best interest. The Israelis were outraged and the session got very heated.”

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