In June 1986, Jewish Week columnist Chris Gersten wrote a blunt little essay about a big mistake. After the AWACS defeat, he argued, the pro-Israel world had over-invested in one party and under-invested in the other. If you cared about Israel's security, you needed relationships with Republicans too. That argument, unfashionable in much of the Jewish world at the time, helped seed an institution that would become the Republican Jewish Coalition. It was a strategic correction, not a conversion