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World Jewish News
Jack Kemp, longtime Israel friend, dies at 73
02.05.2009
Jack Kemp, the onetime Republican vice-presidential candidate known for his affection and activism for Israel, has died.
Kemp died of cancer at home Saturday in Bethesda, Md., reports said. He was 73.
Kemp, elected from upstate New York to the U.S. Congress in 1970 after a star turn as a quarterback with the NFL's Buffalo Bills, forged ties with the pro-Israel movement early on.
He was close to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's current prime minister, and addressed a symposium on terrorism Netanyahu convened three years after his brother Yoni was killed leading the 1976 raid that freed a plane held hostage in Entebbe, Uganda. In that speech, Kemp likened Israel to the early United States, "a city on the hill, a place where it was important to protect, defend and display the light of freedom even if you never made it personally to the citadel."
Kemp served nine terms as a congressman and was unsuccessful in his 1988 bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
He became housing secretary in the first Bush administration. In that role, he became known as the approachable Cabinet secretary who stood out from a remote and elitist administration and insisted on cultivating minorities, particularly among Jews and African Americans. He called himself a "bleeding heart conservative," and led unsuccessful efforts to increase home ownership among minorities.
In 1991, Kemp defied James Baker, then the powerful secretary of state, and met with Ariel Sharon, his counterpart as Israel's housing minister and the godfather of the settlement movement that Baker saw as an impediment to peacemaking.
Kemp was Bob Dole's running-mate on the 1996 GOP ticket; his presence helped assuage Jewish concerns about Dole, who had had a number of bitter clashes with Israel advocates during his career as U.S. senator from Kansas.
Out of politics, Kemp remained close to Israel and was active in the America Israel Friendship League, a group that took pro-Israel messages to non-Jewish communities.
He maintained a reputation for integrity; in the last election, he campaigned hard for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), but berated conservatives who depicted Barack Obama as allied with black radicals.
By Ron Kampeas
Источник: JTA
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