Indeed, at that time, the "spin" dominating the Israeli press coverage of foreign news was very simplistic, encapsulated in that old-time formula utilized to analyze world events, The Elephant and the Jewish Problem; that is, how does the length of the elephant's trunk correlate with the rise and fall of anti-Semitism in the "Diaspora," and in our geopolitical arena, with Israeli security interests. Or to put it differently, was LBJ "good for the Jews?" Or how many Jewish friends did Nixon have and was Dr. K. a "self-hating Jew" and how all of that was going to impact U.S. policy in the Middle East?

Since I started spending a little more time out of the Jewish province, travelling around the world, working as a foreign correspondent, and living in recent years in New York and Washington, DC, I discovered to my surprise that Israel is not really at the center of our universe and that contrary to some Zionist (and ironically, anti-Semite) myths, the course of world history is not always affected by the concerns of or about the Jews.

Yes, yes, U.S. presidential elections are not always determined by the Jewish vote and there are issues other than Israel and the Middle East that effect how Americans, including Jews in this country, cast their ballots in Congressional elections. Jewish legislators can be elected in states with relatively small Jewish population (say, Wisconsin) and that when they vote in presidential or Congressional races, Jews want to know how the length of the elephant's correlates with more universal concerns such as freedom of religion, civil rights, or U.S. policy in Central America, which they place far ahead of more particularistic interests such as Israel. Amazing, but true...

Indeed, those Israeli pundits who still insist on using the Elephant-and-the-Jewish-Problem lenses to focus on global, including American political developments, would be surprise to learn that the politician who won 77 percent of the Jewish vote in the recent Senate race in New York was the one (Charles Schumer) who as a New York Congressman voted against going to war against Saddam Hussein in 1991, which almost by definition means taking a position that didn't necessarily fit with Israeli interests.

At the same time, his rival in the Senate race. Senator Alfonse D'Amato, who was willing to do almost anything to win the hearts (or so he thought) of New York Jews, short of circumcision -- sucking up to Bibi, dumping on Arafat, imposing sanctions on Saddam, threatening war against Iran and, yes, that anti-Jewish power, Switzerland, winning the endorsement of the Lubavitchers and other Orthodox-Jewish groups in Brooklyn, trying to "out-Likud" the Likud -- lost in the battle for the minds of the Jewish voters.

Another big loser is D'Amato's campaign advisor Arthur Finkelstein, that reclusive Republican political and media consultant, who also advises "Bibi" on media strategy and related issues.

Finkelstein's other big client during the midterm elections campaign, and another loser last week was Senator Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina. Faircloth was the darling of the Christian Right, a great ally of the infamous Senior Senator from that State and the former KKK member, Jesse Helms.

Faircloth and Helms, who used to preach in his radio talk show during the 1950's against Communists and Jews (the two were probably considered synonymous in the mind of Young Jesse), together with D'Amato and the many of the conservative Republican Senators, have been the leading Friends of "Bibi" (FOBs) on Capitol Hill.

So, that D'Amato and Faircloth lost their elections (Faircloth, to a 45-year old attorney, representing the New South, which includes the high-tech district in the state), should be considered a good news to those who have been concerned about the growing love affair between the Likud and the GOP, a political and ideological alliance spearheaded by the somewhat bizarre coalition between Jewish Neoconservative intellectuals in the New York-Washington axis (Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Charles Kraauthammer, William Safire, to name a few) and the radical Christian Right (among others, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer) that through its power in Congress and the media has been successful in constraining the Clinton Administration in its effort to push forward the Middle East peace process.

The so-called Republican Revolution that provided the GOP in 1994 with control over Congress ended up creating a pro-Likud bastion on Capitol Hill that became a major political asset for "Bibi" since his own electoral victory in Israel.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (whose top advisors included several former operators of the American-Israeli Public Affair Committee, the so-called Israeli Lobby, and whose wife freelances as a lobbyist for a pro-Israeli economic group with ties to the Likud) was transformed into the Dean of the FOBs in Washington, launching an assault on the White House each time Clinton was considering (God forbid!) putting pressure on Netanyahu and accusing Madeleine Albright of serving as an "PLO agent" after she threatened to force "Bibi" to accept the 13 percent formula (which he eventually did).

To paraphrase what Pat Buchanan said once about the Israeli Lobby, Congress under Newt and the other FOBs became a Likud-occupied territory.

The Likud-occupied Congress together with the Netanyahu lackeys in the media (which in addition to Krauthammer and Safire, include also A.M. Rosenthal and George Will, all of whom have become unofficial spokesmen for the Likud line in the United States), were instrumental in creating a "chilling effect" on those in Washington and the media who have been arguing that there is nothing "anti-Israeli" in an American Administration trying to advance a Middle Eastern peace program backed by the more than 50 percent of Israeli voters and the majority of American-Jews.

If securing the Likud base on Capitol Hill has been the part-time preoccupation of the Neoconservative/Christian Right coalition, their full-time job has been the campaign to force President Clinton from office by trying to mobilize the American public against the president through the exploitation of Monicagate and other "gates."

Occasionally, the two struggles, the pro-"Bibi" battle and anti anti-Bill crusade would be become one and the same, when, for example, Clinton would be portrayed by his conservative Republican as "decadent" (for what he did to Monica) and an "appeaser" (for what he was trying to do to "Bibi"), or when Netanyahu was hoping that the sinking Clinton into the Monicagate mess would make it impossible for him to get into a fight with Netanyahu, and, by extension, with the Israeli Lobby.

Hence, there was a certain symbolism in the fact that the Wye Summit, Clinton's Middle Eastern diplomatic coup took place only a few days before the midterm elections, which turned out to be at the end a political triumph for Clinton.

In both cases, the Likud/Republican team -- "Bibi" and his friends in Washington -- lost the game. The good guys won. Well, sort of. After all, the Republicans still control Congress and the Likud government is still alive and well in Jerusalem.

I suppose that I would be accused of a certain inconsistency here, since I'm trying to apply here my own version of the the-Elephant-and-the-Jewish formula for analyzing current events, suggesting that there is some relationship between the downsizing of the political trunk of the Republican elephant (which happens to be the party's symbol) this November and the possible declining fortunes of "Bibi" the Greater Israel project.

Well, I wouldn't go so far, but suggest instead that in our Global Economy or Global Village or whatever you want to call it, does create certain linkages between developments here and there, the so-called "interdependency" that commentators refer to quite frequently in this new Information Age of ours.

Hence, Clinton's November Surprises (Wye and the elections) may indicate that the U.S. President may be ready to become more assertive in dealing with "Bibi." Perhaps. But don't hold your breath.

Yet, the success of Clinton and the Democrats can be see as part of a new trend, the political resurgence of left-centrist coalitions in other democratic societies (see election results in Britain, Germany, and France), which could be relevant to those of us who are trying to forecast political trends in (still) democratic and westernized Israel. But that may be a stretch. Nonetheless, the failure of the Christian Right to nationalize the midterm elections by using Monicagate to erode the power of Clinton and the Democrats and portray them as moral sinners may be a sign that notwithstanding all the talk in recent years about religious "revival" among Christians, Jews and Moslems, it is Hollywood, MTV and the Internet that constitute our contemporary spiritual homes, our secular temples.

But it would be misleading and even dangerous to apply lessons from the demise of the Moral Majority to the political future of, say, Shas, or to predict that Newt's collapse may be a some kind of an omen for "Bibi" or to hope that not unlike their brethren in New York, the majority of the Jews of Israel would end up electing an intelligent, secular, liberal and progressive leader. But, hey, what's wrong with a healthy dose of wishful thinking once in a while?