Early on, the Club held a high-level policy conference on the Middle East in Washington, the first event of its kind. A couple hundred Jewish leaders from across the country participated in a dialogue with leading State Department officials.
The meeting enabled U.S. officials to hear first-hand, from the largest representative group of American Jews convened since World War II, about the Jewish community’s strong concern for Israel’s welfare and to assess the community’s ability to act persuasively on Israel’s behalf.
In its first public act, the Presidents Club met with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to discuss the implications to Israel’s security of weapons sales to Arab countries; Israel’s exclusion from the U.S. regional defense system; and guarantees of freedom of navigation for Israeli ships through the Suez Canal.
While the meeting with Dulles did not result in any new commitments, it demonstrated that Jewish organizations from all segments of American Jewry could represent the community on behalf of Israel in a unified manner. The highly publicized summit was a significant departure from former meetings with the secretary of state, which were confidential and discreet. The success of this approach became the model for future meetings.
The first actual test occurred during the aforementioned 1956 Suez War when the community had to ask the U.S. government to support Israel. Fox believes that during this crisis the American Jewish community “came of age,” when a “self-assured Presidents Conference came into its own and became a true force on the American public scene.”
In the fall of 1959, the Presidents Conference began to operate with an agenda that included American policy and the Middle East, the support of the American Jewish community for Israel’s security, campus outreach, and relations with other ethnic and religious groups.
Since those early years the Conference has developed into American Jewry’s recognized address for consensus policy, collective action, and maximizing the resources of the U.S. Jewish community.
When events in the U.S., Israel or anywhere else in the world affect the American Jewish community, the Conference takes the lead in explaining and analyzing issues, providing a link between American Jewry and the U.S. government, and spearheading a coordinated community response.
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Of particular importance to the community are the Conference’s special briefings and exchanges with U.S. and world leaders. Meetings include sessions with the president and his top advisers, the secretary of state and members of Congress, as well as with kings and heads of state of Muslim, European, Asian and African countries.
During his historic meeting at the Vatican with a Conference delegation, Pope Benedict XVI issued an unprecedented and absolute condemnation of Holocaust denial, committed the Church to rejecting all anti-Semitism, and announced his intention to visit Israel, which he fulfilled with Conference leaders present.
Conference chairs and executives have in recent years visited Arab countries that had never before welcomed or engaged with the Conference. Changes in the Middle East presented new opportunities that Conference leaders were quick to recognize and pursue. Hoenlein spent three hours in an intensive private discussion with Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, a few months before the revolution (and civil war) there began.
Hoenlein emerged with a much clearer understanding of the president’s views, position, and what the prospects were for the future. Assad explained why he would never leave Syria if the “Arab Spring” came to Damascus, which helped the Conference prepare for what happened later.
“Many Arab leaders,” says Hoenlein, “see Israel in a different light now, as a source of stability, not instability, in the Middle East. Our job is not to be a messenger between governments. Israel has ambassadors, America has ambassadors. We help sensitize, educate, build bridges and facilitate. We find ways to work together on the issues of common concern and even on those on which we differ.”
