Soccer Dad

Democratic israel jujitsu

There's been a lot of debate as to which political party is better for Jews and better for Israel. I believe that the answer to both those questions is the Republican party. I'm not saying that it's perfect, but that it is clearly better than the Democratic party. (A nice observation today at JOSHUAPUNDIT. FWIW, while I can see the Clinton administration doing the same thing with the aid to the PA, I don't see it being nearly as generous on the joint defense work.)

Needless to say there are plenty of people who disagree with me. And a number of them are running for office. James D. Besser who covers American politics for American-Jewish weeklies around the country has reported on a trend among Democrats to argue that the war in Iraq has been damaging to Israel.

Ron Klein, a Democratic state legislator in Florida running against an incumbent U.S. House member, has a strong pro-Israel message for voters in his heavily Jewish district. And part of that message is that the Iraq war has been a disaster for the Jewish state.

An America “mired in Iraq,” he said in an interview this week, can’t address even greater threats to U.S. and Israeli security, starting with Iran. And the Iraq war, he said, has boosted Islamic extremism, not blunted it—echoing the conclusions of an internal survey by intelligence agencies leaked to the press over the weekend.

The comments by Klein, who is challenging Rep. E. Clay Shaw (R-Fla.) in a district that includes Palm Beach and Broward counties, reflect an emerging strategy for Democrats as the battle for control of Congress goes into the home stretch: turning opposition to the Iraq war, which Republicans see as a Democratic liability with Jewish voters, into a plus.

The strategy is aimed at Jews who oppose the Bush administration’s war policies—according to several polls, a solid majority—but who worry about anti-Israel elements in the antiwar movement, a concern the Republican Jewish coalition has exploited in a series of hard-hitting ads in Jewish newspapers.

And it’s meant to overcome a “reluctance to criticize a president who has been supportive of Israel,” said Jay Footlik, an official in the Clinton administration and Mideast adviser to the John Kerry presidential campaign in 2004. “It’s not inconsistent to say that President Bush, like most of his predecessors, has been pro-Israel, but that many of his policies are bad for Israel.”

Footlik, who has been working with congressional Democrats to formulate strategies for the November elections, said recent developments, including Israel’s traumatic war in Lebanon and the specter of an increasingly bellicose and powerful Iran, have freed Democratic challengers to play what some consider their trump card—public discontent about the conduct of the Iraq war—without losing pro-Israel voters.

Explaining how the Iraq war has been bad for Israel is a “shrewd strategy that happens to be true,” Footlik said.

The problem is that anyone who remembers back a few years could respond with a question: A Middle Eastern country that has or is suspected of acquiring weapons of mass destruction in the near future has been threatening Israel and paying for terror attacks against Israel. Should the United States intervene to protect Israel?

Obviously that could refer to Saddam Hussein while he was still in power as much as it could apply to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now. Saddam surely seemed at least as scary then as he had already attacked Isreal. (It's true that there were those in Israel prior to the American strike against Iraq who felt even then that Iran was the bigger threat to Israel. But that doesn't mean that Iraq didn't pose a threat.)

Now the argument is a little more sophisticated if one argues that because the United States is bogged down in Iraq, it can't deal with Iran. But the problem with that argument is that it doesn't allow that two threats could exist against Israel and ignoring one was at a peril. At least the Bush administration removed one threat.

(All of this seems a bit parochial to me. There was a bigger threat to the world that Saddam presented. And despite the way that the NIE is being spun it would appear that the war in Iraq has concentrated the terror threat more in Iraq than elsewhere. The U.S. did not go to war to protect Israel, though that may or may not have been one of the benefits. It went to war to eliminate a global threat. And it removed that threat.

I point you to William Arkin's blog. He doesn't argue that the world is safer because Saddam was removed. In fact he believes it more dangerous. He presents a reasonable scenario, though, that the removal of Saddam hastened a process that likely would have happened anyway. I bring you this even though I know it contradicts my main contention that the world is safer, because I think he reasonably explains that the Bush administration's critics assign too much blame to the administration.)

And what do you do if four years ago you supported President Bush's plan to invade Iraq? Well Gary Ackerman claims that he was duped. This isn't terribly convincing as it wasn't just the Bush administration that felt that Saddam presented a threat to Israel (and the world.) Besides Saddam was paying for terror attacks against Israel. Somehow that's forgotten.

Jerrold Nadler requires no such justification as he voted against the war in Iraq in the first place. The problem is whether he would vote for any use of force against Iran. Or would he just want to leave it up to the ineffectual diplomats who refused time and again to do anything about Saddam. (Saddam was attacked because he was perceived as presenting a threat and was in violation of numerous Security Council resolutions to show that he had disarmed.)

Nadler is the real problem here. He can argue that the war in Iraq is bad for Israel. But he'd argue against just about any use of force. Even against Iran, even if it were necessary. (Would he feel the same say if the President were Al Gore or John Kerry? I don't know.)

What do I consider to be pro-Israel in American policies and politics?
1) Anything that makes the world safer will make Israel safer. Obviously Democrats will disagree with my premise here.
2) Someone who would defend Israel, like John Bolton or John Danforth. A few months ago I was invited to participate in a blogger conference call with Ira Forman of the NJDC. One thing that Forman said that disturbed me a lot was that the Bolton nomination was not that important to the Jewish electorate. Bolton (and Danforth) has (have) stood up for Israel in the UN more forcefully than Albright or Holbrooke. (Though I believe that Holbrooke was better than Albright.) It's a shame that Democrats don't recognize that supporting Bolton is being pro-Israel.
3) A policy that would allow Israel to defend itself. I don't believe that President Gore would have allowed Israel to prosecute Operation Defensive Shield as completely as President Bush did (despite his occasional misgivings.) And I don't believe that President Kerry would have warded off political pressure to end the war against Hezbollah as long as President Bush did. (When Israel struck back against Arafat's war in 2000 the Clinton administration did not veto a condemnation of Israel and was still pushing Israel to come to an agreement with Arafat who had rejected the Camp David Accords six months earlier and who had started a terror war against Israel two months later.)

I'm not saying that Republicans are perfect. Obviously not. But they are more likely to defend Israel and to allow Israel to defend itself than Democrats. So if you need a pro-Israel reason for supporting one party or another that's why I prefer the Republican Party. (Though its important, my Republicanism doesn't begin and end with support for Israel.)

I think that the end of Besser's article properly analyzes the likelihood of Democratic success in taking this tack:

Still, some pro-Israel analysts say voters who put Israel at the top of their political agenda may not be impressed.

“What causes concern, at least among some of the more educated people in our community, is the isolationist attitude of many,” said Dr. Ben Chouake, president of NORPAC, a large pro-Israel political action committee based in New Jersey. “And they’re concerned about the 800-pound gorilla in the room — Iran. So the question is which candidates are willing to face this harsh reality and deal with it diplomatically, economically, but ultimately, you have to be ready to deal with it militarily.”

The growing Democratic focus on Israel and the Iraq war, he said, will have an impact only “with those voters who already don’t like what’s going on in Iraq.”

Technorati tags: Republicans, Democrats, Israel.