Romney went to Israel with an eye to Jewish voters in America. And yes, he pleased the likes of Sheldon Adelson…and frustrated the likes of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, one of the most prominent Jewish voices in America today. If one positive thing can be said to have come from Romney’s trip to Israel, it’s that it brought this out of Friedman:
Much of what is wrong with the U.S.-Israel relationship today can be found in that Romney trip. In recent years, the Republican Party has decided to make Israel a wedge issue. In order to garner more Jewish (and evangelical) votes and money, the G.O.P. decided to “out-pro-Israel” the Democrats by being even more unquestioning of Israel. This arms race has pulled the Democratic Party to the right on the Middle East and has basically forced the Obama team to shut down the peace process…
…the main Israel lobby, Aipac, has made itself the feared arbiter of which lawmakers are “pro” and which are “anti-Israel” and, therefore, who should get donations and who should not — and you have a situation in which there are almost no brakes, no red lights, around Israel coming from America anymore…
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It is into this environment that Romney wandered to add more pandering and to declare how he will be so much nicer to Israel than big, bad Obama. This is a canard. On what matters to Israel’s survival — advanced weaponry and intelligence — Defense Minister Ehud Barak told CNN on Monday, “I should tell you honestly that this administration under President Obama is doing in regard to our security more than anything that I can remember in the past.”
While Romney had time for a $50,000-a-plate breakfast with American Jewish donors in Jerusalem, with Adelson at his elbow, he did not have two hours to… meet with… Abbas, or to share publicly any ideas on how he would advance the peace process.
So Romney flew thousands of miles to wedge an issue not into the American voting public at large, but into the Jewish community itself. Friedman’s hard break with the establishment is case and point. Romney seems to be bringing liberal Jews out of the woodwork.
