Obama or McCain? Most experts agree that American Jews will return to their traditional voting positions
By JAAP VAN WESEL14barack224(photo credit: AP)Extract from an article in Issue 14, October 27, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Reportclick here.
Both candidates for the presidency of the United States have pledged unshakable support for the security of Israel. Although they differ in their approaches to solving the problem, both have called an Iranian nuclear weapon unacceptable and view it as an existential threat to the security of Israel. Democratic candidate Barack Obama puts emphasis on diplomacy with military force as last resort, while his Republican rival, John McCain advocates a more aggressive policy based on military force. Obama wants to shift the war on terror to Afghanistan and withdraw from Iraq; McCain wants to stay the course in Iraq.
Within the Jewish community, traditionally a Democratic holdout, Obama has a wide lead over McCain, 57 percent to 30 percent, according to the latest poll by the American Jewish Committee, released in late September. But this is significantly less Jewish support than for previous Democratic candidates - Jews voted 3 or more to 1 for Clinton, Gore and Kerry.
Although Jews compose only two percent of the overall American population, they are politically much more active than average Americans, according to John Green from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, an independent think tank. Thus, in a close election, the Jewish vote could potentially be decisive, especially in states with large numbers of electoral college votes. Recognizing this, both the Republicans and the Democrats have developed strategies to persuade Jews to vote for them on November 4.
And it is clear to both sides that Israel and the Middle East need not be their primary focus. As Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), tells The Report, "Israel has strong support from both campaigns but Israel and the Middle East are far from being the major issue according to which Jews will decide for whom to vote."
Yet, given the smaller proportion of Jews who declare themselves committed to the Democrats than in previous campaigns, the parties cannot afford to ignore issues surrounding Israel and the Middle East, either. Thus, the primary strategy that has emerged, especially among the Democrats, calls for reassuring Jewish voters about the candidates' positions on Israel - and then "moving on" and concentrating on the "real" issues of this campaign: health care, abortion, energy, the role of religion in public life, conservativism and liberalism, and the economy.
"It's as if both campaigns want to say to the voters, 'Our candidate will be good on Israel and, in addition, you're going to get the policies you support in all the other domestic issues, too,'" says a Jewish activist who has been involved in numerous presidential
campaigns.
It is important to note at the outset that, in contrast to the active cooperation that The Report received from the NJDC, no prominent official from the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) agreed to meet with The Report.
The main offices of the NDJC, which is not legally part of the Democratic party, are located in Washington, D.C., with an additional two field offices in Cleveland and New York. The Obama campaign has also established outreach committees to Jews in dozens of other major cities.
"The raison d'être of the NJDC is fundraising," says a veteran Jewish Washington insider, who spoke with The Report on condition of anonymity. "Jews are big donors in political campaigns." He adds that this is especially true for Democrats, because half of all Democratic individual donations to political campaigns come from Jews. In contrast, he says, in the Republican camp, Jewish fundraising makes up about 20 percent of total individual contributions. Forman confirms that a substantial number of donors to the Democratic Party are, indeed, Jewish, although he says he does not know specific numbers.
The Republicans, in contrast, rely on a smaller number of larger contributions. Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, whose net worth is estimated, according to the Las Vegas Sun, at some $15 billion, has, say Republican sources, contributed some $4 million to the RJC. Adelson, who has launched a free, daily Hebrew-language newspaper in Israel, is widely known to be a supporter of Likud party head and former prime minister, MK Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu. Like Netanyahu, Adelson is also an opponent of the U.S.-backed Annapolis peace process, aimed at creating a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel, and believes Israel should resist U.S. and international pressure over settlements in the West Bank.
Forman, 56, is a longtime Democrat who has worked for AIPAC and founded the NJDC in 1990. Matt Brooks, executive director of the RJC and of the Jewish Policy Center, a public policy think tank, began his political career as state chairman of the Massachusetts College Republicans while an undergraduate at Brandeis University. Founded in 1985, the RJC defines itself as a political lobbying group that advocates Jewish support for the Republican Party. On its website, the RJC, which has 44 chapters throughout the United States, states that its mission is to "foster and enhance ties between the American Jewish Republican decision makers... [and] to sensitize Republican leadership in government and the party to the concerns and issues of the Jewish community, while articulating and advocating Republican ideas and policies within the Jewish community."
In the competition over "who will be viewed as the stronger ally of Israel," Republican strategy has concentrated on an attempt to undermine Obama's credentials, as reflected in his voting record in the Senate, and argue that his policy on Iran is dangerous for Israel.
"People from Illinois know very well that Obama has been a staunch supporter of Israel," says Jay Footlik, former special adviser to president Bill Clinton and Jewish liaison in his administration, a senior Middle East adviser to the Kerry campaign, and a former candidate for the U.S. Congress. "The challenge has been to communicate this on a national level."
Forman attacks what he refers to as the "smear campaign" by Jewish Republicans which aims to associate Obama with "PLO terrorists" in crucial swing states, such as Florida and Ohio. In particular, he refers to a poll conducted by the RJC among 750 Jewish voters by phone in Ohio and Florida, ostensibly to test messages that would cause them not to vote for Obama and included questions such as, "Would you still vote for Barack Obama if you heard that he had given money to the PLO?" "What if you were told that the president of Iran endorsed Obama?"
"The RJC has "sunk to a new low," Forman tells The Report. Brooks has acknowledged to The Politico, a D.C.-based political journalism organization, that the RJC conducted this survey, but denied that it was a "push poll," deliberately asking misleading questions designed to spread false information.
In response to what they view as Republican efforts to undermine Jewish support for Obama and Biden by questioning their credentials on Israel, an NJDC briefing sheet says, "Using Israel as a wedge issue is good for neither political party nor for the Jewish community. Israel's interests are best served when the Jewish community and both political parties show a unified front."
Democrats also accuse Republican supporters of knowingly misrepresenting Obama as a Muslim, and intimating that he therefore has a hidden, built-in anti-Israel agenda, in the expectation that this will deter Jews, as well as others, from voting for him. Daniel Pipes, a well-known neo-conservative, has repeatedly argued on his website (www.danielpipes.org) that Obama practiced Islam and, in January 2007, the conservative Washington Times Insight Magazine alleged that "he was a Muslim, but he concealed it."
An e-mail campaign, suspected of originating among ultra-rightist American Jews living in Israel, made similar allegations and included a picture of Obama together with Edward Said, the late Palestinian-American professor at Columbia. Forman contends that some of these accusations have also come from Jewish organizations in the United States.
Obama himself says that he is a Christian and he was sworn into the Senate on his family Bible. "When people fabricate stories about someone's faith to denigrate them politically, that's an attack on people of all faith," Obama Spokesman Robert Gibbs issued a statement in March 2007. But according to a poll conducted by the Pew Research center in July 2008, some 12 percent of Americans still believe that Obama is a Muslim.
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) executive director Abraham Foxman tells The Report that the rumors about Obama purportedly being a Muslim "have been offset by his record." Yet, the issue was troubling enough to bring the leaders of all major Jewish organizations, including the ADL, the American Jewish Congress, and the American Jewish Committee, among others, to publish an open letter in the press in which they wrote, "Many in our community have received hateful e-mails that use falshoods and innuendo to mischaracterize Senator Barack Obama's religious beliefs and who he is as a person."
Interestingly, Obama's wife, Michelle, is a cousin to Rabbi Capers C. Funnye, Jr., spiritual leader of the Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in southwest Chicago. But officials in the Obama campaign have repeatedly stated that they do not want "family issues" to be involved in the campaign. Forman tells The Report, "It makes you feel good when a relative of Obama is a rabbi, but it's not relevant to the campaign. "We always want to judge a candidate on his voting record and statements."
Last month the RJC launched an ad in Jewish print media around the country regarding Obama's "friends." Brooks writes, "It says something profound that Senator Obama surrounds himself with individuals who are consistently and strongly hostile to Israel, pro-Palestinian, and in the case of Jeremiah Wright, simply anti-American. These relationships leave one wondering about Senator Obama's wisdom and judgment. A man is judged by the company he keeps, and one must ask why Senator Obama has chosen this company."
The references are to Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to president Carter; General Tony McPeak, co-chairman of the Obama campaign; Robert Malley, member of the Middle East team of president Clinton who was removed from Obama's advisory staff because he had had contacts with Hamas representatives; and former Congressman David Bonior. All have criticized Israeli policies, especially with regard to settlements, or positions associated with the right-wing Likud party.
Former Californian Democratic congressman Mel Levine, now an Obama adviser on the Middle East and a speaker at the NJDC conference, alleges in response that for the RJC, only the extremist ideas of the Christian coalition meet the "pro-Israel" test.
Furthermore, says Footlik, "much of the criticism of Obama's supposed advisers was really insider politics. The average American Jew, just coming back from Labor Day and now really trying to educate himself or herself about the campaign, is not really concerned about specific advisers. And even if they were concerned, Obama has Dennis Ross, [an official in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, a fellow of the Washington Institute, an unaffiliated think tank, and head of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute in Jerusalem] and [former U.S. Ambassador to Israel] Dan Kurtzer as Middle East advisers, and American Jews know that these men are truly pro-Israel."
Forman says he views these ads as "guilt by association" as is, he says, the attention paid to Obama's long association with Rev. Jeremy Wright, pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, who, in a sermon he preached in 2003, called on God to "damn America" and denounced the United States for supporting "state terrorism against the
Palestinians and black South Africans." In a now famous speech in Philadelphia on March 18 this year, Obama distanced himself from Wright.
But Democrats play the same game when they draw associations between Palin and Patrick Buchanan and Jews for Jesus, who have preached in her church. At a recent NDJC conference, some delegates even obliquely pointed out that Palin was born and went to college in Idaho, which is also headquarters of the white supremacist Aryan Nation organization.
"Democrats lie about Governor Palin supporting Pat Buchanan for President," reads an angry press release by the RJC in response to the Democratic allegations. Retorting, the RJC issued a statement arguing that "Pat Buchanan says he shares the same views on Israel as Barack Obama. Those views are dangerous, reckless and wrong."
Extract from an article in Issue 14, October 27, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Reportclick here.
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