"Obama and the Jews"
A great op-ed piece in today's New York Times by Thomas Friedman, discussing a future President Barack Obama's relationship with Israel. And Friedman also points out that George W. Bush, supposedly such a great "friend to Israel," is also the first US President to publicly espouse a Palestinian state.
Friedman also says this:
Amen. Israel and Israelis can take care of themselves. While I want there to always be a strong US-Israel relationship, as Americans, that shouldn't be our first priority in a presidential candidate.
It really shouldn't even be in the top 10.
Read the whole article: Obama and the Jews.
Friedman also says this:
Personally, as an American Jew, I don’t vote for president on the basis of who will be the strongest supporter of Israel. I vote for who will make America strongest.
Amen. Israel and Israelis can take care of themselves. While I want there to always be a strong US-Israel relationship, as Americans, that shouldn't be our first priority in a presidential candidate.
It really shouldn't even be in the top 10.
Read the whole article: Obama and the Jews.
1 Comments:
Hi, Eric,
Friedman's piece is eminently sensible, and thus pretty hard to argue with. But I think his real point is that defining "strong support for Israel" is the trick.
The subtext seems to be (correctly) that support for Israel shouldn't be blind cheerleading of whatever policy the Israeli government enacts. The most supportive thing to do for Israel is to have a set of coherent, fair-minded policies toward both sides in the conflict, and to have an energy policy that results in the ultimate bankruptcy of the "petro-dictators".
In that sense, the president "who will make America [US only, presumably :-)] strongest," must necessarily be one with thoughtful, realistic policies towards energy and the Middle East. Since the latter must (and should, IMHO) include consideration of the situation of Israel, and certainly also, at minimum, unwavering support for its continued existence, it must be at least in the top 10.
That said, I don't think any serious candidate for office in the US fails to support Israel on basic existential grounds, and I don't doubt that Obama has a much better grasp of how to bring the two sides to the table than either Bush or McCain. He'll likely (with a probability damn close to 1) get my vote.
Shmuel Rosner had a somewhat related piece on Slate a couple of weeks ago, on the question of what it means to be "pro-Israel". (Link goes to article.)
Cheers,
Rick
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