The “Candidate for Change”

Michael Jansen

The vast majority of the 280 delegates attending this week’s US-Islamic forum in Doha endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. His rival, Hillary Clinton, and Republican challenger, John McCain, secured only a handful of votes.

The main reason the delegates backed Obama, the youngest of the three hopefuls, was that he promotes himself as the candidate of “change”. This region is in urgent need of sweeping changes in US policies, particularly towards Palestine-Israel, Iraq and Iran.

Back in the US, Obama is finding it difficult to avoid the minefields of communal politics in the battle for the votes of Protestants, Catholics, Muslims and Jews in the tight primary contest for his party’s nomination. While he has not been compelled to take foreign policy stands in his drive to win over Catholic and Protestant voters, he has had to make statements to please pro-Israel Jewish voters. He has also been smeared by hardline Likud elements in Israel and the US Jewish community for an old statement expressing empathy with the Palestinians and for recruiting advisers who do not toe the Likud line.

The main targets of the smear-by-association campaign are Robert Malley, former president Bill Clinton’s special assistant during the 2000 Camp David talks, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former president Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. The attack on Malley has been so vicious that the Clinton camp has rallied to his defence. No one, of course, will defend Brzezinski because Carter is accused of being an anti-Semite thanks to his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”.

Akiva Eldar, writing in the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, said: “Obama is working hard to allay the fears of ‘Israel’s friends’, a description reserved mainly for activists of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and for Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference Presidents [of Major Jewish Organisations]. As far as they’re concerned, whoever doesn’t support the Israeli government’s policy 100 per cent is unfit for leadership.”

Eldar points out that Clinton is benefitting from her “investment in the Jewish community and Israel” since she became a senator for New York as well as her husband’s popularity in this community and in Israel.

While Protestants tend to vote Republican and Catholics switch from one party to the other (since 1972 they have chosen Republicans five times and Democrats four times), the Democrats generally garner the support of 80-85 per cent of the Jewish community. This means that in this photo finish Democratic contest for the nomination, the “Jewish vote” could be even more crucial than in the November election.

The results of primaries and caucuses show that both Clinton, who is trusted by the “Israel lobby”, and Obama, who is not, enjoy Jewish support. On February 5, Super Tuesday, Clinton secured the votes of 69 per cent of Jewish voters in New York and 60 per cent in New Jersey. Analysts credited her success to the fact that there is a high percentage of conservative Orthodox Jews in the population.

She also won the backing of Jews in Arizona. In the earlier Florida primary, which the Democratic National Committee disqualified, Clinton won 58 per cent of Jews against 26 per cent for Obama. She also secured the votes of 60 per cent of Jews in Maryland although he won the state overall.

Obama won the majority of Jewish votes in Connecticut and Massachusetts, a state he did not win. In California, another state Clinton won, Obama secured 49 per cent of Jewish votes to her 47 per cent. Obama was generally backed by liberal, anti-Iraq war members of the Jewish community.

Countrywide Jews are divided along the same lines as the US population as a whole. While Clinton attracts older voters, youngsters go for Obama.

In a New York Times article, commentator Roger Cohen expressed the opinion of liberal Jews towards Obama. “I believe Barack Obama is a strong but not uncritical supporter of Israel. That is what the Middle East needs from an American leader: the balance implicit in the two-state solution.”

He quoted Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC official, who made the point that a majority of US Jews “want a two-state peace, but are intimidated by a vocal right wing.”

Cohen quotes David Axelrod, an Obama strategist who said that if he is elected president, he would be “actively involved from day one” in the quest for a negotiated settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Cohen concludes his article by stating that Obama is not “blind to the fact that backing Israel is not enough if such US backing provides carte blanche for the subjugation of another people”.

Haaretz has ranked candidates from 1 to 10 on the basis of who would be best for Israel. Number one in mid-January was Republican Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor, who received 8.37. But he dropped out of the race when John McCain became the leading contender. Democratic hopeful Clinton was number two, with a 7.62 rating. John McCain was awarded 7.12. Obama rated 5. The fact that Jews are voting for Obama, the candidate least favoured by Israel, over Clinton, currently Israel’s number one, shows that they are influenced more by healthcare, the economy and the Iraq war than by the candidates’ approach to Israel.

Hoenlein, a heavyweight in the pro-Israel lobby, has expressed concern about “all the talk about change” – particularly in the Obama camp – because “change” could harm Israel if the next US president compels it to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians and initiates dialogue with Iran, regarded by the Zionists as the main threat to Israel.

21 February 2008