Jack Kemp
The Officers and Board of JINSA note sadly the passing of the Hon. Jack Kemp, a longtime member of the JINSA Board of Advisors, a great friend and a great supporter of Israel and America's democratic allies around the world. Mr. Kemp received JINSA's Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Service Award in 1985.
Everyone in Washington has a favorite Jack Kemp story - we are no different.
For JINSA, it was an evening in early June 1982 at the beginning of Israel's Operation Peace for Galilee - a response to months of Katyusha shelling by the PLO of Kiryat Shemona and the northern Galilee. At the beginning of OPG, there was a news "greyout" which the PLO filled by announcing 10,000 civilian casualties and Israeli "war crimes" against the Palestinians and the people of Lebanon. The New York Times called the IDF movement toward Beirut a "blitzkrieg," inveighing against Israel for the first time, but not the last, with images of Nazi brutality.
JINSA held a meeting with Jack as the featured speaker. The room was crowded and the crowd was nervous and unhappy. "What if all the bad press was true?," people asked each other in hushed tones. "What if Israel had overreacted?"
The first thing Jack Kemp did was admonish us in no uncertain terms. "How can you say this; how can you think this? You can't possibly believe that Israel has abandoned its moral and democratic foundation. This is the IDF we're talking about. Where is your faith in the Israel you know?"
Jack Kemp never lost faith in the Israel he knew, and he was shortly proven right.
Much was made of a purported meeting during the term of President Bush (41) in which a certain cabinet secretary was said to have denigrated the American Jewish community in language best described here as "salty." Jack was then secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) [where he coined the term "bleeding heart conservative," a forerunner of the "compassionate conservatism" of President Bush (43).]
Shortly after that meeing, two members of JINSA's professional staff paid a call on Jack in his HUD office. There, prominently displayed on a banquette was the large, swooping, porcelain eagle JINSA had presented to him in 1985. We were pleased to see it, and more pleased when he a) affirmed the content of the meeting while b) assuring us that he was there and the cabinet secretary did not go unanswered.
Reviewing this piece for publication, JINSA's Executive Director Tom Neumann was unhappy. "It lacks the love Jack deserves," he said. We share Tom's thoughts:
While many gave ideas to conservatism, Jack also sought to give character to conservatism. He was as much a defender of minority rights and equality, and had as much compassion and as much concern for justice as any liberal. He was a peer to even Jesse Jackson as a defender of civil liberties. His commitment to Israel was born out of his passion for justice. At the same time he was an advocate of fiscal and personal responsibility, a champion of entrepreneurship and of capitalism.
He was American - first, last and always - and he understood better than most what made America great. He will be missed because there are no more Jack Kemps to be seen on the contemporary stage.
Liberal and conservative, we are all poorer for having lost him.
We, in JINSA, will miss him.
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