(HOST) There are several important groups that are uneasy with the prospects of a President Barack Obama, among them the American Jewish community. This morning commentator Barrie Dunsmore, former diplomatic and foreign correspondent for ABC News, examines that issue.
(DUNSMORE) Senator John McCain got several standing ovations when he spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Monday.
Members of this highly influential pro-Israel lobby enthusiastically welcomed McCain’s hard line positions on Iran. They apparently share his view that Senator Barack Obama’s Middle East policies would threaten both American and Israeli security.
Something that makes many Americans uneasy – Jews and non-Jews alike – is Obama’s stated willingness to negotiate with Iran. Given the outrageous public statements of Iranian President Ahmadinejad that Israel should be wiped off the map, such concerns are understandable.
For several months there has been an audible whisper campaign among some American Jews that Obama would not be good for Israel. This prompted New York Times columnist Thomas Freedman, who is Jewish, to begin his column on Obama and the Jews with a series of rumored Obama quotes – that there has to be an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank; that any peace agreement must establish a homeland for the Palestinian people; that such a state is long overdue, and that the Palestinian people deserve it.
As Friedman then pointed out, such things have been said, not by Obama, but by President George W. Bush – long seen as Israel’s best friend in the White House.
The real issue is, what kind of Middle East policies are most likely to serve both America’s and Israel’s best interests, and does anyone truly believe that Bush’s policies of the last eight years have done so?
On the contrary, in Lebanon, in the West Bank and Gaza, and especially in Iraq, Iran’s surrogates are in the driver’s seat – while America’s political and military power – and moral authority – have taken a huge battering world wide.
One Jewish criticism leveled at Obama is that he’s another Jimmy Carter- someone much too willing to negotiate with Israel’s enemies. Coincidentally, a month or so ago, after Carter met with Hamas leaders in Damascus and Gaza about opening talks with Israel, he was publicly shunned by the present Israeli government.
However, this prompted an editorial in Ha’aretz, one of Israel’s major newspapers, that carried the headline, Our Debt To Jimmy Carter. After criticizing various Israeli policies in far harsher terms than would normally be heard in this country, the highly respected Ha’aretz concluded, "Carter’s method, which says that it is necessary to talk to everyone, has still not proven to be any less successful than the method that calls for boycotts and air strikes. In terms of results, Carter beats out any of those who ostracize him. For the peace agreement with Egypt, he deserves the respect reserved for royalty for the rest of his life."
In my view, what made Carter – and former American diplomats like Henry Kissinger and James Baker – successful in the Middle East is not that they catered to every Israeli whim but that they were tough and fair with both sides. That’s still a formula that can well serve America and Israel.