He suggested that he might send Jimmy Carter, the rare evangelical Christian who is not a friend of Israel, to work on Middle East peace negotiations. When that idea bombed, he blamed the "mistake" on his speechwriters. It's not clear whether John Kerry would encourage negotiations with Yasser Arafat, whom he described as a "role model" and "statesman" after the signing of the Oslo accord. How he really feels apparently depends on where he is, and who's listening.
The Republicans count on Jews in America to spot the Kerry weakness as it affects Jewish and Israeli interests. They are actively courting the 500,000 Jews who live in Florida, where a small shift could make a big difference.
Only one in 10 Jews in Florida are thought to have voted for George W. in 2000, but that was before Sept. 11. A spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign does the math. "Without Joe Lieberman on the ticket we get a jump," he told the St. Petersburg Times. "Then you add in the president's Israel policies and our grassroots effort . and you can't help but get a big jump."
Many Jews agree with Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who calls President Bush "the best friend Israel ever had." In January, 31 percent of the Jews surveyed in a major poll said they would vote for the president's re-election. The perils of Middle Eastern politics and worldwide terrorism trump everything else.
When Israel destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in 1981, the world universally - and naively - condemned the raid. Had it not been destroyed, there would be no argument today about whether Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. One of the Scuds that landed on Tel Aviv and Kuwait in 1991 would likely have carried a nuclear tip. Saddam, in fact, had shown no mercy when he used poison gas to kill his own Kurds.
Terrorism in the Middle East was used first against the Jews, but the suicide bombers were but a warm-up act for the terrorism against the United States on 9/11. Jews who take pride in their smarts know the stakes this time.