Examines issues of the day against a triumvirate of core principles: liberty, responsibility and justice.
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This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
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Friday, December 19, 2003
Jewish Republicans? New York Jewish Republicans? Yes, that's like smoking and not inhaling, right? Wrong.
The Republican Jewish Coalition finally opened a New York chapter to serve the tri-state region. At the first annual Hannuka party, the group hosted Minnesota Senator, and Brooklyn native, Norm Coleman. To an audience of 200-300 supporters, Sen. Coleman recounted the ways in which President Bush's actions in office have made him more attractive to Jewish voters than Republicans typically are.
Most important is the President's character. He will not waver or flinch or falter in our epic struggle against radical Islamic terror. His vision is based on principle, not on fleeting trends or fads of the day. And he will not compromise on his principles. This is why he has admirably withstood international pressure to appease terrorist states and, through sheer force of will, is leading the global fight against terror.
This is also why he steadfastly supports Israel, an island of liberal democracy in which popularly-elected Jews and Arabs together serve in parliament, in its struggle against Palestinian militancy and arch-terrorist Yasir Arafat. Only when leaders recognize that Arafat has no desire or inclination to negotiate peace with Israel, which has demonstrated its ability to sign peace accords with Arab neighbors in Egypt and Jordan, will a realistic peace process be able to proceed. To his credit, the President has sidelined Arafat, despite the latter's popularity among the chattering classes of Europe.
In addition, with education such an elemental component of Jewish life and culture, the President's assertion that there can be no improvement without ways to measure progress and establish accountability for performance, Bush's emphasis on educational improvement is important. This is particularly true for Jews who fought for civil rights in the 60's, and now lament that black children are held hostage in a failing public school monopoly.
But most critical is the President's refusal to cede moral authority to a morally bankrupt United Nations. This organization, which is manifestly corrupt and incapable of judging right from wrong (eg. Libya chairs the human rights commission), is held by some to be magically imbued with the sole source of legitimacy for multilateral action. Bush rejects this notion, knowing that multilateralism can be much more effective and possess greater credibility with international coalitions outside the UN, such as the 60 countries involved in Iraq. An organization that holds conferences to promote anti-Semitism, which was held in Durban, South Africa, has no moral authority. And in the war on terror, moral authority is absolutely essential.
For these and other reasons, many observers believe the President has a chance to break the Democrats' lock on the Jewish vote. This could not only make New York competitive but, with an AARP endorsement of his landmark Medicare drug law, put Florida safely in his column. But most important is to know that the Jewish vote is up for grabs, and that President Bush's integrity and leadership are making more and more Jews supportive of him. And there was no better place to see this dynamic in action than at the New York Republican Jewish Coalition.
12/19/2003 02:05:00 PM
Monday, December 15, 2003
In this time of year, it is interesting to note how elections are becoming like Christmas: they are barely over before people begin preparing for the next one. So it is not too soon to analyze the impact of the 2004 election on Israel. With the September 11-induced focus on Islamic terror and President George W. Bush's strong support for Israel, some observers wonder if the Democratic Party will be able to retain its near monopoly of the Jewish vote. For those Jews whose primary concerns are Israel's security, not to mention increasing anti-Semitism, 2004 may not be the year to habitually repeat their November routine. The impact on Israel and international Jewry of competing philosophies regarding America's role in the world has rarely been more important.
Because much of the Democratic primary base is consumed with a visceral hatred of President Bush, the presidential candidates are reluctant to show the slightest agreement with his foreign policy and are competing on the degree of their opposition to it. As a result, while there are minor differences in their policy positions, their platforms all hinge on the illegitimacy of U.S. power unless it is used with the imprimatur of multilateral organizations. And despite the coalition that the President assembled to topple Saddam Hussein, the choir book from which the Democrats sing stipulates that the only institutions with the authority to act are the United Nations or, by virtue of the French UN veto, the European Union. This crystallizes neatly the foreign policy fault line of the 2004 election: the Democratic emphasis on process and consensus and the President�s emphasis on strategy and purpose.
Jews must weigh the effect on Israel of these 2 starkly different philosophies. According to Bush, the interests of the United States are paramount, and the Commander-in-Chief must act decisively in the nation�s interest. According to the Democratic candidates, harmony among nations is paramount, and America must defer critical decisions to the UN and EU. It is impossible to overstate the implicit premise underlying this worldview: that these institutions are imbued with greater moral authority than America, which necessarily means that their values are superior to America�s. Therefore, it is imperative, say the Democrats, to subordinate American power to these multilateral institutions and empower them to guide American action. Since the issue is whether the world will be led by American values or by UN/EU values, Jews should examine the track record of these bodies to which Democrats want to delegate American sovereignty.
The United Nations is essentially the Turtle Bay outpost of the We Hate Israel Society. The outright hostility of the UN to a nation that was created by the UN is certainly odd. But given that institution�s almost single-minded obsession with Israel-bashing, one can be excused for thinking that passing anti-Israel resolutions is its primary function. Most readers are probably all to familiar with this track record, but a little reminder might be useful.
� Before launching the 1967 Six Day War, Egyptian president Nasser ordered UN peacekeeping troops out of the Sinai and the UN dutifully complied
� Libya chairs the UN human rights commission and Syria was president of the security council
� The UN lied to Israel about the UN�s possession of video evidence containing information related to the kidnapping of Israelis by Hezbollah
� Roughly one quarter of the UN�s resolutions are targeted against Israel, while few, if any, target Arab terrorism and tyranny
� The UN�s racism conference in Durban quickly descended into an anti-Semitic extravaganza
� While doing nothing about Syria/Lebanon�s hosting of several notorious terrorist groups and the PLO�s decades of bloodshed, the UN referred Israel�s construction of a security fence to the world court
The other entity that the Democrats seek to placate is �Europe.� It can be argued whether such a thing exists, as recent failed talks on an EU constitution illustrate and as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld�s old Europe-new Europe comment aptly captured. But whatever form it takes, Europe is almost as antagonistic to Israel as the UN is. And the ascendancy of anti-Semitism in Europe reveals a culture predisposed to animosity towards Israel:
� Notwithstanding a frightening rise in often fatal attacks on Jews and Jewish property in Europe, the EU attempted to quash a study of it that revealed that much of it is perpetrated by Muslim immigrants
� The French response to attacks on Jews is to tell them not to look Jewish
� A recent European Union survey found that Europeans view Israel as the greatest threat to world peace - greater than Iran, Syria, North Korea or Libya
� At a national ceremony in his honor, one of Greece's most beloved composers, Mikos Theodorakis ("Zorba the Greek"), with only a muted rebuke by the Greek government and almost no coverage by the media, asserted that "that these little people [Jews] are the root of evil"
� Israeli academicians have been expelled from international research organizations
� An Israeli graduate student was refused a position at Oxford simply because of his nationality
� A poll in Italy indicated that 1 out of 6 Italians would prefer that Israel not exist
� A communiqu� following an Israeli-EU foreign policy ministerial meeting equated terrorism with responses to it by blaming Israel for "fueling extremism"
� And it was not so long ago that the French ambassador to Britain derided Israel as "that shitty little country" that is the source of all the world's problems
Whether hostility towards Israel is the result of latent anti-Semitism emerging from under decades of Holocaust guilt or it is simply a craven attempt to buy off the jihadists, the State of Israel--not unrelenting and unrepentant Arab terror--is viewed as the primary obstacle to world peace. If the choice is to stand with liberal democracy or to stand with authoritarian militancy, the UN/EU take the path of least resistance and hope that it will buy protection from terror. In this war on terror, where resolve is our most potent weapon, the UN and EU have none. As a result, the "accomodationists" disdain the chutzpah of uppity Jews who insist on retaining their statehood. If a judenrein Palestine will make their problems go away, they will happily oblige.
So this is how the UN and EU view Israel. As alarming as this is, more troubling still is that �accomodationism� has metastasized to America, where it has taken root in the supra-nationalist Democratic Party. Most Americans reacted to September 11 with a clear idea of who was guilty and a justified will to destroy our terrorist enemy. Accomodationists sought to discover what America did to bring this terror upon us. In their relativistic world of gray, this crowd does not only oppose President Bush�s black-and-white approach, but they ridicule it as simplistic. Bush's belief that good and evil do in fact exist in our midst is moralistic and unacceptable to them. Instead of relentlessly annihilating our terrorist enemies (certainly not pre-emptively!) with willing allies, we must fight this war only within a pre-established multilateral framework (i.e. the EU and UN), not an ad hoc coalition.
More than any other nation in history, America's tradition is to fight dictators, not appease them, and destroy terrorists, not to bargain for their goodwill. As a result, accomodationism has remained on the fringe of American thought. Until now. For American accomodationism has found its wealthiest and most powerful benefactor in George Soros. The billionaire investor, nominally an American, has taken it upon himself to shift American policy away from an uncompromising war against Islamic terror towards one of accommodation. In a recent speech to a Jewish group, he demonstrated the logic behind the "Soros Doctrine" by blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. For if the Bush Doctrine gave rise to anti-American terrorism (the fact President Bush's anti-terror policy was not in place on or prior to September 11 is a minor detail that Soros seems inclined to ignore), then Jewish provocations are equally to blame for anti-Semitism. In remarks ADL Executive Director Abraham Foxman termed "absolutely obscene," Soros suspended his isolation from the Jewish community, to which he contributes little, to identify with it only on the topic of self-hatred ("I�m also very concerned about my own role because the new anti-Semitism holds that the Jews rule the world...As an unintended consequence of my actions, I also contribute to that image.").
But this is America and everyone is entitled to his beliefs, no matter how convoluted, which is why Soros's activity in the political world has such dangerous ramifications for Jews. Because now one of the richest Jews in the world has made it his mission to back the United States away from both its war on terror and its strong support for Israel. Since the Bush Doctrine does not have room to accommodate terrorism, for the Soros Doctrine to govern, President Bush must be defeated. As a result, George Soros has stated that the main purpose of his life, the goal to which he has so far allocated $15 million dollars, is to unseat President Bush a year from now. And by virtue of his pledge to deploy his entire fortune to defeat the President if necessary, George Soros is now kingmaker and prime financier of the Democratic Party. The result is that while frontrunner Howard Dean�s Internet-charged campaign has been dragging the Democratic Party towards the accomodationist camp through grass-roots activism, Soros is now pushing the party establishment in that direction as well.
While the Democratic Party adopts accomodationism, Republicans steadfastly believe that terrorism must be crushed. This posture extends to GOP for support of Israel. Since Jewish support for Democrats outweighs that for Republicans by about 9-to-1, Republicans� pro-Israel stance is clearly one of conviction, not political expedience. Evangelical Christians, a core Republican constituency, are far friendlier to Israel than any core Democratic group (probably including Jews themselves). While Yasir Arafat was Bill Clinton's most frequent White House guest, George W. Bush refuses to speak with him and rightly views him to be an impediment to peace. President Bush also vocally stands up to anti-Semitism in a way the UN and EU never would. He issued the most vociferous condemnation of Mahathir Mohammed's remarks of any world leader and even pulled him aside at an Asian summit for a private reprimand. In his speech at Whitehall Palace during his recent state visit to Britain, Bush specifically decried the scourge of anti-Semitism not once, but twice.
The bottom line is that Jews, at least those for whom Israel's security is a primary concern, must reconsider their lockstep devotion to the Democratic Party. The historical Jewish identification with Democrats is a political manifestation of our tradition of tikkun olam. But times change and the parties have changed. What was once a great party that stood for national security is now the party of accomodationism. Gone is Truman's recognition of the embryonic Israeli state, JFK's staunch anti-communism, and Scoop Jackson's vocal support for democracies. When it comes to a choice between resolutely fighting terror and siding with Israeli democracy against Palestinian militancy on the one hand, and kowtowing to Eurocrats and others hostile to Israel on the other hand, the stark difference between the two parties could hardly be clearer. So as Jews go to the polls in a year to vote for President, they will have to choose which George has Israel's best interests at heart: Bush or Soros.
12/15/2003 07:31:00 PM
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