November 6, when the U.S. chooses a new, or re-elects a sitting, President is a day of momentous, world-historical importance. For a host of reasons, which I will try to lay out, the better choice insofar as Israel and Jewish issues is concerned, seems to me personally to be far and away Mitt Romney.
From his election in 2008, Barack Obama has sought, as he put it recently, to “put daylight between the U.S. and Israel”. His extreme Democractic-left background, and radical associations as a community organizer and politician in Chicago and at the University, oriented him in this direction early on.
From his disingenuous (tosay the least) pro-Muslim 2009 Cairo speech, through his urging of Israel to return in negotiations with the Palestinians not to the 1967 but the 1949 armistice lines (what Abba Eban called “the Auschwitz borders”), Obama has repeatedly pressured Israel and spared her enemies.
His reaction to the unfolding “Arab Spring” has been similar. From playing to the Muslim Brothers and then abandoning long-time US ally Hosni Mubarak, to the current “neutrality” as Assad murders over 35,00 people in the Syrian civil war, to his silence when in 2009 courageous Iranians rose against the mullocracy, Obama has tried to “reset” relations and negotiate with dictators.
The most obvious example of this is his long and unrequited love affair with the Iranian dictatorship, and his denigration of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and consistent refusal politicially to act cooperatively with Israel in opposing Teheran’s genocidal policies. While finally concurring with the sanctions policy promoted by Congress, he dallied while the mullah spun their centrifuges: they had less than a pound of bomb-usable fissionable material in 2008, and over five pounds (and climbing rapidly) today.
Romney has been consistently supportive of Israel, is a friend of Netanyahu, and wants to reasert strong US leadership in the world. As Israel faces an ever-shrinking time-frame for action against the genocidal Iranian regime, Romney represents a more reliable, and more steady, ally – something on which 58% of Israelis and 85% of Israeli-Americans, recently polled, agree.
So, as they say, vote early, and vote frequently, and keep in touch for next week’s CIJR Isralert analysis of the results, and consequences, of tomorrow’s election
Prof. Frederick Krantz, Director, CIJR