Nation: Jewish Lobby Loses a Big One

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Yet the appearance in Washington of sleek limousines rolling away from the city's Madison Hotel to carry Saudi Arabian princes and high officials to meetings with Senators had an impact. American-educated Saudi Prince Turki attended a lunch given by South Dakota's pro-Arab James Abourezk for 22 other Senators. Individually, Turki and another member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Bandar, met with other Senators. Also from Riyadh came Ghazi Algosaibi, Minister of Industry and Power, and Sulaiman As-Salim, Minister of Commerce. All were low-key but sophisticated salesmen who, in excellent English, made a strong case that their nation needed the planes for defensive purposes. Wisely, they feigned little interest in how many aircraft the U.S. might sell to Israel, saying that was none of their business. Just as shrewdly, they never mentioned oil. The significance of this open Saudi lobbying, said Dutton, was that "Senators no longer feel that they have to meet Arabs in the back room."

The Saudi drive also included full-page ads in U.S. newspapers, glossy multipage displays in magazines and 15-page memos sent to all Senators to explain just why Saudi Arabia wanted the F-15s. On the day of the vote Cook got in touch with some 200 influential businessmen and asked them to telephone Senators they thought might still be undecided.

Yet it was the Jewish lobby that, as always when an Israeli position seems threatened, churned out a huge avalanche of letters, telegrams, telephone calls and personal pleas. During an annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the veteran lobbying group for all Jewish organizations, some 600 members fanned out in Washington to besiege members of Congress on the plane package. Generally, their pitches were not the least bit subtle; the Senators' votes would be "a litmus test" of whether they deserved continued Jewish support. "It was very personal lobbying, terribly intense," observed one pro-Administration lobbyist trying to compete with the Jewish campaign.

As usual, much of the outpouring of Jewish sentiment was spontaneous. Some was organized at local levels by rabbis and other Jewish community leaders. B'nai B'rith and the American Jewish Committee, as well as other national organizations, promoted the cause. In Washington, some 20 young men and women in the offices of AIPAC revved up their mimeograph machines to dispatch detailed "fact sheets" to all Senators. The group's four registered lobbyists, headed by Morris J. Amitay, 41, relentlessly roamed the Hill.

But if Jewish organizations responded almost as one to oppose the package, many individual Jews were less certain. Some thought Israeli Premier Menachem Begin deserved to be pressured more by the U.S., that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's mission to Jerusalem rated a reward, that moderate Arabs like the Saudis could help achieve peace. More significantly, however, they were confused by the official Israeli position on the package. Neither Jerusalem nor the Israeli embassy in Washington flatly urged that the package be killed if it meant that Israel could not get the planes it wanted—until just a few days before the debate. "There wasn't a coherent, unified position, and that made it hard to sell," complained one lobbyist.