In the grand tradition of the early-bird special, Florida voters are already taking to the polls. And, in the grand tradition of the 2000 presidential election, Floridian elections officials are already encountering problems, both technical and political. And with Pat Buchanan is no longer running for President, many Florida Jews are having a difficult time deciding which candidate best represents their views. As election day comes, the spotlight on Florida will only grow brighter.
Bush and Kerry are both fighting for the votes of the 700,000 Jews in Florida, votes that can have monumental impact in this hotly contested swing state. Democrats have assembled a Jewish all-star team consisting of Chuck Schumer, Alan Dershowitz, and Joe Lieberman to back Kerry in Florida. The Republicans, however, have dropped James Baker’s slogan of “Fuck the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway,” and are aggressively campaigning in the state, deploying the Cult of Giuliani and the more nebbishy Cult of Koch in a bid for elderly Jewish voters.
Though Bush received less than 20% of the Jewish vote in 2000, many are predicting that he will win more Jewish support this time around due to his close relationship with Ariel Sharon and the perception that he is a better “friend of Israel” than Kerry. Bush has managed to hold onto this reputation despite Kerry’s consistent record of supporting Israel in the Senate, not to mention the interesting fact that his brother, Cameron, is a Jewish convert.
If Kerry has a perfect pro-Israel record, what does it mean that Bush is a “better friend of Israel”? Maybe it means that he is more eager to spread empire, more eager to invade Arab nations and force Americanization. But Bush has united the Arab world in hatred of America. According to the Institute for Strategic Studies in London, over 18,000 potential terrorists are at large and recruitment has skyrocketed because of American policy. And Bush is a better friend of Israel? Many thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed by this administration with an untold number of child victims. UNICEF’s mid-October report cites that Iraq’s mortality rate for children under five, which increased more than any country in the world since 1990, continues to increase, despite toppled Saddam statues, the import of miniature American flags, and tales of progress from our leaders. Maybe these lives don’t matter because they are not American or Israeli. In that case, one might consider the more than 1,100 Americans killed in battle, sent to Iraq because of phantom weapons of mass destruction, mobile chemical labs, and nuclear facilities – sent to Iraq and endangered because of massive intelligence failures that foresaw our servicemen being greeted as liberators, but said nothing of a brutal insurgency.
Let’s be honest. Bush is not a “better friend of Israel,” he is a better friend of corporations, of neoconservative hawkish ideology, and of international hegemony. This is a war of propaganda, doublespeak, and lies. Only on rare occasions does a bit of truth escape, either in the form of whistleblowers like Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neill, or in the verbal slips of those within the Bush administration. Such is the case of Lieutenant General William Boykin, who was just reprimanded by the Army for giving speeches in which he described the war as a “Christian war” against “Satan.” This is reminiscent of when Bush first described the military action in Afghanistan as a “crusade.” Does this eagerness to engage in a clash of civilizations make Israel feel safer?
If we found out that a group of people was responsible for originally training and arming the Taliban, for uniting the Arab world and much of the non-Arab world in anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment, for allowing Osama bin Laden to escape, and for allowing the recruitment of barbaric terrorist organizations – there are many things that I’m sure we’d like to do to that group. One of those things should not be voting for their re-election.
