Good for whom?

May 4, 2012

Re “‘The Jewish vote is really not about Israel’,” April 18

Your interview with Forward columnist J.J. Goldberg includes two statements of particular interest. He makes the point that American Jews vote on what they think is good for them and are motivated by “fears of the Christian Right.” The first point is surely universal, but understates that in doing so, they merely perpetuate the practice of bygone generations by voting Democrat, irrespective of changing environments. However, Israelis welcome America’s Christian Right, whose unquestionable support is immense, while fearing Obama’s disproportionate Jewish left-wing appointees who have fully embraced his passion to subject Israel to what Abba Eban once termed “Auschwitz borders.”

A further aggravation for Israel is the persistent overkill in minimizing radical Islam. Obama’s ineptness is about to turn the “Arab Spring” into a massive Middle East explosion.

As the astute Middle East author David Pryce-Jones observed many years ago, “Westerners habitually and ignorantly misconceive the responses they are likely to encounter from the Arabs, unsuitably and even  laughably projecting their own political and moral attitudes where theses cannot apply.”

Alex Rose
Ashkelon, Israel