Don't be so pessimistic
Reader comment on item: Democrats, Republicans, and Israel

Submitted by rick (United States), May 23, 2006 at 11:25

There are Americans who think Israel is a liability for the United States. That is a minority view. Most Americans respect and support Israel. The House of Representatives is consistently more pro-Israel than either the Senate or the Executive branches.

The story of a Democractic distancing from Israel may have its roots in the late civil rights period, the post Martin Luther King, Jr. period, as Mr. King was pro-Israel. However, with the Nation of Islam led by the noted anti-Semite Farrakan holding greater and greater "moral" weight with African American opinion and with African American leadership in general being anti-Smeitic such as Jesse Jackson who ran for President and Al Sharpton being wooed by the Democractic Party an anti-Israel core began to build at the Democractic Party.

Israel was and still is considered a "white" nation as opposed to the Arab nations who are viewed more sympathically as darker skinned by theis left wing of the Democratic Party. This is why slavery as practiced by Muslims against Black African non-Muslims ( Sudan) was not made an issue in the US and the Israel rescue of Black Jews in Ethiopia was likewise ignored. Those stories do not fit the image that African Americans want as far as Muslims and Israel are concerned. That Israel is predominantly made up of Sephardic Jews and not European Jews is simply unknown. Israel is partly to blame as it did not make the world take notice of the 800,000 Jews thrown out of North African and other Arab nations after 1948. Compare to the propaganda of palestinians who never cease to talk about displaced Arabs due to the 1948 war they started and many of which were not exactly thrown out but sought temporary refuge in neighboring Arab states while waiting for the Arab armies to defeat and mop up the Jews of the new Nation of Israel.

Getting to today, it is true that the Republican Party is more pro-Israel than the Democratic but hopefully the anti-Semitism of the left wing Democrats has lessened from its heyday period and even Democrats will support Israel.

The bigger fear is the American public's general fatigue with a military response in the Muslim world at a time such a response may be more critical than ever. My hope is that the fear of putting troops on the ground will result in an aerial-only campaign as far as Iran is concerned if and when that becomes necessary. Such a campaign is precisely the way to go regardless of the public's "battle fatigue" or not and such a campaign should have been the centerpiece of Iraq as wll. Not the nonsense "shock and awe" display we witnessed but a more productive bombing campaign precisely to kill Baathist politcal and military leaders and destroy the most pro-Saddam portions of the Iragi armed forces. What we did in Afganistan worked well. That should be our model in all Muslim lands as much as possible.

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