WASHINGTON – At a meeting of Jewish leaders last Thursday, after numerous lawmakers got up to talk about American policy toward Israel, Rep. Charles Rangel said he wanted to clarify remarks he made about the Iraq war that earned him the scorn of the Anti-Defamation League.

The New York Democrat said he regretted if his “choice of words were insensitive” when earlier this month, on the radio station WWRL, he compared silence about the war in Iraq to silence about the Nazi atrocities in the Holocaust, he said in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

But Mr. Rangel made it clear during yesterday’s interview that he thinks the ADL director, Abraham Foxman, crossed a line when he told the New York Daily News that the 75-year-old Harlem lawmaker’s remarks were “outrageous” and said Mr. Rangel owed apologies both to the victims of the Holocaust and to America’s soldiers.

“No one should challenge my patriotism,” Mr. Rangel, who served in the Korean War, said yesterday, “When he says I owe the soldiers an apology, I visit these guys, they do what they are trained to do. They thank me for trying to protect them, in doing what I’m supposed to do.”

Those words were significantly softer than the fiery press release Mr. Rangel’s office sent to reporters on June 8: “Abe Foxman has made a living attacking Black leaders on charges of anti-Semitism. His statements are usually libelous, divisive, and serve no purpose but to pit Blacks and Jews against each other while keeping Foxman’s name in the newspapers.”

The latest spat between Messrs. Foxman and Rangel comes as the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party, of which Mr. Rangel is a leader, is gaining influence. On Thursday, Mr. Rangel took part in a minority hearing on a set of leaked documents that disclose doubts held by some British diplomats about the Bush administration’s case for war as early as March 2002. Some Democrats have suggested the memos could be grounds for impeachment proceedings.

At those hearings, former CIA officer Ray McGovern speculated that securing Israel’s interests was one of the real reasons why the president went to war. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, has already disassociated himself from Mr. McGovern’s comments as well as literature passed out at a viewing of the hearing that suggested Israel may have played a role in the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Before he attended the hearing on the so-called Downing Street memos, Mr. Rangel spoke to a room full of leaders from the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in Washington who gathered in Washington Thursday for briefings from the White House and Congress. According to four people in attendance, the audience applauded vigorously after Mr. Rangel’s 15-minute speech.

“He said the right sorts of things. Rangel made a good impression,” said the chairman of the Committee for Accuracy in Mideast Reporting in America, Joshua Katzen. “He seems sincere in his desire to work with the Jewish community.”

The executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Ira Forman, said yesterday, “I think this is generally not helpful for folks, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, to use Nazi or Holocaust analogies. I know that Charlie himself last week said, ‘I know where my heart is on this stuff.’ Charlie has recognized this might not have been the most appropriate thing to say.”

Mr. Rangel’s remarks on WWRL reopened an old feud between the lawmaker and Mr. Foxman. Eleven years ago, the two men engaged in a war of words after the ADL took out an advertisement in the New York Times excoriating anti-Semitic remarks made by Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Abdul Muhammad. At first Mr. Rangel accused Mr. Foxman of creating a controversy in an effort to raise money. He later rescinded those comments in a March 2, 1994, letter to Mr. Foxman.

The man who drafted that letter for Mr. Rangel and mended fences between the two high-profile New Yorkers said yesterday he thought Messrs. Foxman and Rangel would see a way to resolving their differences this time around.

“These are two very decent, very able politicians,” said jazz saxophonist-turned-Nixon counsel, Leonard Garment. “They have constituencies and particularized concerns, which they defend with real advocacy of words. In this case, there may be some hyperbole on both sides. I am sure they will mend it. They are fundamentally on the same page when it comes to matters of the heart politically.”

While many Jewish leaders appear willing to give Mr. Rangel the benefit of the doubt, Mr. Foxman wants an apology. “I am not interested in a war and I could not care less about peace,” he said in an interview. “But if he wants us to sit down at a table to put it behind us – and I will never say no to anyone who wants to reach out and make peace – the only way is to take it back with a press release to bring back the ugly things he said about me.”

In the interview yesterday, Mr. Rangel would not say whether he would go that far. He did say, however, that his biggest mistake was to respond to Mr. Foxman’s initial quote in the Daily News. “If you want to do blacks and Jews and me and maybe Abe a big favor, you can say this never should have happened with me responding to Foxman,” he said. “I want to be as nice as I can be, because he gets outraged when I say he does this to raise money. I am not saying that. I have no idea why I am so popular as his target. I have no idea,” he said. “I just wish he called me first.”

One thing is for sure. This time around, Messrs. Rangel and Foxman will not be able to rely on Mr. Garment’s mediating skills. When asked whether he would play the role of peacemaker this time, the former White House insider said, ” I think they can manage it on their own. I am beyond peacemaking.”