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.The Carter administration was as taken aback as anyone by Be-gin’s victory.In a letter of congratulation Brzezinski admitted that, when Begin told him a year before that he expected to win the1977 election, “I was somewhat less than convinced.”20 NSCstaffers struggled to find any biographical background information, eventually coming up with a history of the Irgun entitled Terror Out of Zion.Brzezinski passed this on to the president, marking a few pages including Begin’s dictum “We Fight, Therefore WeAre.”21 The president himself had been frankly “shocked” by Begin’s victory.When the new Israeli leader was interviewed onAmerican television, Carter noted in his diary: “It was frightening to watch his adamant position on issues that must be resolved if a Middle Eastern settlement is going to be realized.”22294reynolds_02.qxd 8/31/07 10:29 AM Page 295cam p dav i d 197 8Even before Begin’s election, Carter was running into problems over Israel.In March 1977 he had stated that, although “the first prerequisite of a lasting peace” was recognition by Israel’s neighbors of the country’s right to exist, another essential element was “a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years.” No previous American president had made such a commitment, and it caused a storm both in Israel andamong Jewish-Americans.23Belatedly Hamilton Jordan, assistant to the president, acknowledged that the administration had underestimated the Jewish lobby.In a lengthy memo he reminded Carter that its fund-raising capacity was immense: in 1976 the American Red Cross had raised $200million, whereas Jewish charities netted $3.6 billion.Through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which represented more than thirty organizations, Jewish-Americans had an“unsurpassed” ability to mobilize political pressure across the country, playing on sympathy for Israel and memories of the Holocaust.With an estimated 31 “hard” votes in the 100-strong Senate, and 43others that could be counted on in “a showdown,” it exerted an effective veto in the upper house.AIPAC operated in a “vacuum,”noted Jordan, because there was “no political counterforce” to agitate for the Arabs or Palestinians.One might think that all this represented the obvious facts of American political life, particularly for Democrats.But it was “not a part of our Georgia and Southern political experience,” Jordan told the president,“and consequently not well understood.”24During the summer the White House developed a new strategytoward the Jewish lobby: cultivating key leaders and ensuring that the president did not do all the administration’s speech-making about the Middle East.On the face of it, the elevation of a hardline Israeli leader made Carter’s search for peace even more difficult.But, as both Jordan and Brzezinski noted, many Jewish-Americans were equally unsettled by Begin, fearing that he couldjeopardize America’s special relationship with Israel.His extremism might make them more receptive to a balanced peace plan fromCarter.25295reynolds_02.qxd 8/31/07 10:29 AM Page 296sum m i t sMuch clearly depended on Begin’s first meetings with the president, held at the White House on July 19–20.Beforehand Samuel Lewis, the U.S.ambassador to Israel, sent a series of background telegrams, and William Quandt of the NSC underlined their keypoints for Brzezinski: Begin’s “deep convictions and principles,”how it was “impossible to overestimate the Holocaust’s impact” on him and the way his legal training had influenced his style and approach to negotiation.After their first day of meetings Carter noted in his diary:“I think Begin is a very good man and, although it will be difficult for him to change his position, the public-opinion polls that we have from Israel show that people there are quite flexible.and genuinely want peace.” Begin delivered his standard historical lecture on the Jewish people’s right to all Judaea and Samaria; he was unyielding on the question of settlements, unrolling a “national security map” to show how much of Israel was in range of Arab artillery
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