The GOP - the only viable choice

Republican control of the White House and Congress in 2008 is critical for Israel's security.

By KORY BARDASH, CO-CHAIRPERSON OF REPUBLICANS ABROAD IN ISRAEL
giuliani 88 (photo credit: )
giuliani 88
(photo credit: )
Republican control of the White House and of Congress in 2008 is critical for maintaining Israel's security. Since Israel came into existence in 1948, the Democrat and Republican parties have changed places regarding the Jewish state. Since 1990, the Democratic Party has cooled toward Israel, while the Republicans have shown themselves to be among Israel's staunchest supporters. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll taken before the 2006 mid-term elections found that 84 percent of Republicans said they sympathized more with Israel than with the Arab states, as opposed to only 43% of Democrats. It is not just a matter of polling data. Philosophically, there is a wide chasm between Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy issues. The Democratic Party has in recent years endorsed the view that international problems should be resolved multilaterally, a policy that means invoking institutions like the United Nations, the European Union, and the International Court of Justice that have been at best incompetent and at worst anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. Multilateralism also means dialoguing with states that harbor despotic regimes and embrace fundamental Islamic theologies with their intractable hostility towards the Jewish state and the Jewish people. The Republican approach, on the other hand, has been to utilize America's predominant position to combat terror and terror-based regimes, and not to shrink from use of economic and military sanctions to confront existential threats. There could be no more dramatic illustration of this disparity in philosophy than the parties' responses to last summer's Lebanon war. While the UN secretariat and EU foreign ministries strove to squelch Israel's response to Hizbullah's unprovoked kidnapping of IDF reservists and missile attacks on Israel's northern cities, the Republican-led White House and Congress stood firm in their resolve to enable Israel to dispatch the Iranian and Syrian proxies in southern Lebanon. One should keep in mind that the last two Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, embraced and continue to support policies that were inimical to Israel's very survival. Carter, calling Israel an "apartheid state," has even demanded that it remove its security barrier, which has been proven effective in protecting Israeli citizens. With threats by Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria, Iran and fundamentalist Islam to wipe Israel off the map, American voters cannot afford to place the reins of US foreign policy in the hands of Democrats who seek to "get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine." The Republican Party's clear focus on how to deal with these threats has lead the overwhelming majority of American voters in Israel to support the Republican Party in the past several elections. When it concerns Israel, Iran and the war on terror, American voters have only one real choice - the GOP.