Any Jew that votes for Biden is insane. Forget about what he’s doing to destroy America (open borders, crime, $34 trillion deficit, obsessive focus on DEI and skin color as opposed to the quality of a person’s character, etc.) One his first day as president he removed the sanctions on Iran; for some bizarre reason he fails to strike Iran even as they or their “proxies” kill Americans and disrupt international shipping; Biden pays, trains and supplies all of Israel’s enemies including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis; he violates the US Taylor Force Act by supplying the PA with “pay for slay” money paid to the families of terrorists that kill Jews; he’s constantly pushing for a cease fire that would hand Hamas a huge win. I could go on. Trump, on the other hand, imposed massive sanctions on Iran; cut funding to UNRWA; killed Qasem Soleimani; moved the US embassy to Jerusalem (not one democrat attended the ceremony). I could go on. The republicans are Israel’s strongest ally knowing that Jews won’t vote for them. The democrats for the most part dislike Israel or openly hate it knowing that the Jews will vote for them regardless.
Everyone knows Netanyahu is one of the most corrupt people on earth. Hence his need to"reform" the judiciary God forbid he be accountable. I think you're forgetting that Netanyahu bears the responsibility for October 7th. Virtually completely. How you don't see that I'm not sure. When you have corrupt authoritarianism you have to align yourself with inept and unqualified bedfellows. Netanyahu with the extreme right. Again October 7th was on netanyahu's watch. If it were shimon Peres can you imagine the outrage from the right!? So no double standard please. So I'm supposed to trust the ass who's responsible for the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust with the appropriate response? Get off the pipe! You missed the point when folks are anti-trump. If you've been paying attention, project 2025 is an interesting read. Trump's take over of the RNC with his daughter-in-law? Straight out of Saddam Hussein's playbook. Jared got a cool couple million from the Saudis oh excuse me I meant billion. And do you think Trump has any intention of losing the election even if he loses? So pardon us if we'd rather have a democracy than authoritarian fascistic state
PS I'm Jewish, Democrat And I love Israel and was married to an Israeli.
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends"
-- Martin Luther King Jr.
I remember a few days after October 7 at a rally in Massachusetts, with both Massachusetts Senators Warren and Markey in attendance, where Markey called for "de-escalation". He was roundly criticized by a local, Jewish, elected official. But the Democratic Party effort to protect and save Hamas has continued with constant calls for "ceasefire now", regardless of the consequences later.
Is Winston Churchill remembered for his calls of "ceasefire now" to end WW2 and leave Nazi Germany in control of continental Europe?
Far more disgusting are the efforts to trivialize or deny Palestinian atrocities on Oct 7, exemplified by "Progressive" Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal's dismissal of rape crimes against Israeli women.
I use the term "Palestinian atrocities" with great precision, as Palestinian surveys repeatedly show 3/4 of Palestinians support the Oct 7 atrocities; these were not caused by an extremist minority but rather by an extremist majority. A truly democratic Palestinian state would thus be a mortal threat to Israel and to moderate Arab regimes.
I see no such attempts by any significant group in the Republican party; on the contrary, there have been moving expressions, even in the last few days on the floor of the Senate, to persevere in the support of Israel and its war against Hamas.
These are uncomfortable facts for those in the American Jewish community who value their support of progressive causes like BLM and DEI more than the survival and well-being of the State of Israel.
A kind word for what might have been an easy counterterrorism task and all of this avoided if he would have done the right thing and surrounded himself with the right people. That's not just a screw up! Like a bus driver falling asleep and taking a thousand kids off the cliff with him! The bus was the one that drove them off the cliff!
There are things you have control over and things you don't. Hamas is going to do Hamas.
He made choices and people are dying by the tens of thousands because of it. He could have prevented it. Again I'm not going to want to follow the leadership of that guy. You might but I don't. A proven screw up!
Definitely Yoav Gallant, Avigdor Lieberman or Naftali Bennett would have provided much tougher leadership that would have vaporized Hamas and its supporters.
But that's quite different from putting the blame for the Oct 7 atrocities on Netanyahu. He didn't carry them out, Hamas did and they're responsible.
"Blame the victim" is a common anti-Semitic trope, as seen recently in PA chieftain Mahmoud Abbas claiming that German Jews were trying to destroy Germany and forced Hitler to act.
And another note you mentioned Abbas blame juice for causing Hitler! This is what Putin is currently doing to Ukraine and by the way he also said that Poland forced Hitler to attack it! And Trump and the Republican party are siding with Putin. Do you really want to associate yourself with that faction? Everything the Republicans do benefit Russia. Sorry to diverge but you made me think of Putin's stupid speech. And then dumbass Trump says out loud that Russia should attack whoever the hell they want. What kind of message do you think that sends? We've got big problems with those idiots wielding any power. Single-handedly, Mike Johnson at the leash of trump is determining foreign policy in favor of Putin. Which also empowers Iran! It all ties together
Abbas has a "doctorate" from Orient University in Moscow. His "dissertation", titled The Other Side, is an attempt to show that Jews were not murdered by Germany in WW2.
Your propaganda pickled mind can't even think straight: Putin's largest revenue source is oil and gas; does he benefit from US cutbacks of LNG exports? Which president came up with that?
You are sadly right. The Boomers have run America into the ground. They have been in charge of everything for the past thirty years but tech start-ups run in t-shirts, and this decline and ridiculous political choice is what their control of the country has come to. A disgrace, as the reductio ad absurdum of the Boomers' ruling vices, narcissism and its self-blinding, The Donald, would say.
"Ridiculous political choice." You nailed it. To depend on democracy to protect our freedom has become problematic. Oh how forward looking our founders were in making a constitutional republic. Our freedom depends on individuals recognizing that freedom is the path and to work together to further that goal, however imperfect.
Except for one of those people is a treasonous insurrectionist who would prefer that regardless of the election he should be in power. Project 2025. Read It. Both sides don't intend to disregard the election results and install loyalists. Netanyahu is the Trump of israel. Responsible for the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
It must be very difficult for you to continue but please do. I love to read you wherever I find you. I have great respect. I am a little old retired Goy in Northern Minnesota and need to hear you. Thank you.
I am a strong Canadian GOY looking down on America and am amazed at the stark difference between your two ( so far) presidential candidates. Ambassador Oren’s excellent speeches and opinions mark him as a top Jewish “ influencer. ” I am not an influencer, merely an observer, “Watchman, Watchman, what of the night?” I, like Ambassador Oren, cannot vote in a US election but I know in my gut that actions speak louder than words/rhetoric. On that basis the evidence solidly mounts up ( I am a trial lawyer) on the Trump side, even if I don’t like his orange hair, and the possibly unpredictable moves he may make in the future. Was it unpredictable that he would move the US embassy to Jerusalem? Was it unpredictable that he would refuse to negotiate with Iran? Was it unpredictable that there would be Middle East agreements including the Abraham accord? The man moves to his own beat to be sure, but it may be a good thing, a very good thing, especially for Israel.
Do me a favor and don't use the word goy. In Yiddish, the word is neutral. In English, the word has negative connotations and is very impolite. As a substitute, you can say Christian, non-Jew, somebody who is not Jewish, etc. I apologize for being a nudge here.
Abraham accords were very lucrative for Jared. To the tune of 2 billion. Netanyahu is responsible for October 7th. He emboldened Hamas and directly funded him. You refer to the Iranian nuclear arrangement and you are so off base. In that agreement they were much farther away from nuclear capability. To give you an idea the Secretary of energy is in charge of our nukes. Obama had Nobel prize winning nuclear physicist in the job working with his Iranian nuclear physicist counterpart to make the arrangements for how to push back the nuclear capabilities. Not only did Trump's reversal of that Accord bring Iran closer to nuclear capability but it shows the world that they cannot depend on any agreement they make with the United States. You on the right seem to completely miss the concept that even if you disagreed with the policy how dangerous it would be for the world to understand that they cannot make a deal with the United States for will be reversed by the next president. PS the rest of the civilized world was on the same side of the deal.
I didn’t realizes Clarity was meant to be an influencer blogpost. I subscribed in the mistaken belief that it had a more sacred mission (e.g., to act as an intellectually honest arbiter in an unbiased search for the truth). I guess I should unsubscribe
I agree with you that Clarity isn’t meant to be an “influencer” post. Yet Ambassador Oren states facts so succinctly and clearly, the posts cannot help but influence Jews and Goys. It is a compliment.
The current political campaign epitomizes what Peter Beinart brilliantly prophesied would tear American Judaism apart over Israel a decade ago in The Crisis of Zionism. Jews now basically face the choice of "My Israel, right or wrong" or my family's centuries-long liberal Jewish moral values. Either back Trump, Shel Adelson's anointed "Messiah" for Bibi's increasingly far-right Israel, or Biden, forced by his base to become the most critical American president of Israel in memory, breaking even more with Bibi than Obama. Adelson well knew when Trump first appeared that Israel's movement further and further to the right would be necessitated by demographics and by the Jews' determination never to change the status quo between the river and the sea. It followed for him that American politics needed a strong man like Bibi of its own who would move it well too the right more or less in tandem with Israel's movement, thus keeping America as attached to Israel as ever. Too bad the history of Jewish political ethics as far back as we can recall in America has been strongly on the left, since fights for freedom for all oppressed groups used to be a fight for complete freedom for American Jews too. But Jews now grown rich in both America and Israel, like Adelson, now seem more and more eager to make the political ethical choice that rich people have always made everywhere: security against, rather than justice for, the poor and oppressed. I'm hopeful most American Jews will stick with justice as the best path to ultimate security and vote for Biden. But no doubt many more than before will choose Bibi and Trump's approach of security without regard to justice, which, from my perspective, will be a Jewish tragedy.
I'm a Bernie bro myself, so Biden's too moderate and neoliberal for my taste. But he did save all our lower classes with his gigantic, inevitably briefly inflation-producing emergency stimulus package to save us all from Depression in the depths of COVID. And Biden is the closest white politician to the black community in America. To me, Trump is simply a con artist perpetually pretending to be the tribune of the masses while appropriately exclusively mixing with and serving what we might call the Palm Beach Republican elite of America. Bernie's politics are those any secular Jew in the tradition of American Jewish leftism should be for. Biden listens to Bernie a bit, and has been constantly attacked for doing so. Trump is the absolute personification of the values Jew for justice, whether secular or religious, have opposed for over a century, including white supremacy the Jews founded the NAACP to fight, since supremacy always implied antisemitic as well as anti-black. There's no question that Trump richly deserves the honorific of "Messiah" for the vision of Israel personified by Bibi, the Jewish far right in America and Israel, and the late Shel Adelson. Any Jew who wants permanent separate and inferior living situations for Arabs in the West Bank and the coming Gaza totally cleansed of Hamas naturally has to vote for Trump, if that Israel is his or her number one issue. Too bad that treatment of Arabs obviously totally conflicts with the exact same human values for which the Jews' NAACP has always fought, and will put Israel at odds with most American blacks from here on out.
"briefly inflation-producing?" We're 3 years into way above-trend inflation and it's accelerating once again. Core inflation is up over 20% since Biden took office and it's still rising. Those lower prices are never coming back. Inflation is a permanent tax on all people's incomes and savings. There will be nothing brief about it - it's a permanent reset of prices. I lived through the 1970s - the costs of cars and housing never went back to their late 1960s levels.
Real hourly wages under Biden have fallen 2.54%. Beginning in April of 2021, American workers experienced 25 consecutive months of inflation exceeding wage gains. And not everyone works for employers able to pass on higher wage costs to their customers.
If you're willing to vote for Trump, nothing I can say will change that. Unfortunately, you may well be in the majority, which will mean catastrophe for both America and the world, but the greatest possible bonus for Putin.
Lol, I was curious where you were going with your first post but abandoned your second after reading "I'm a Bernie bro myself." Good luck to you and the bros!
thanks for responding, Fred. I believe that most of this is opinion, however the policy you mentioned was the stimulus. I'm guessing you were equally positive on the 3.1 trillion of stimulus that Trump signed into law in 2020 as well? I can't say that I'm a big fan of either of these bills, especially when it comes to printing trillions of dollars to inject into an economy after both advocated for its shutdown during Covid. I think that was a huge mistake, and we knew at the time Biden signed his 1.9 trillion stimulus package how the disease acted, who it killed and had enough data to see that shutting down businesses, schools, and keeping healthy people home, etc. was not the answer. We also saw a recovering economy by this time, and if Biden had left well enough alone, more people would have gone back into the workforce instead of continuing to collect unemployment and other forms of government subsidies. (By the way, Investopedia has a great chart -https://www.investopedia.com/coronavirus-aid-relief-and-economic-security-cares-act-4800707#toc-comparison-to-the-consolidated-appropriations-act-and-the-american-rescue-plan
- that breaks down all 3 bills and how many billions were allocated to each bucket. Kind of thinking that some of it was not designed for helping those who lost their entire life savings due to govt shutdowns, etc. but political pandering. Also, let's not even mention the fraud. )
I'll also admit to being fiscally conservative, as well as was one of the "essential" job workers from the beginning of Covid, so worked throughout. I took care of plants in businesses, hospitals, car dealerships, etc. and well, plants still needed taking care of, so I was out there. Along with postal workers, janitors, security guards, Amazon delivery drivers, and grocery store workers. None of these jobs is a high paying job, and I know many people who could not pay for gas and food without finding a second job. I believe that giving a hand up to those in need is good, however its jobs that lift people out of poverty, not hand outs or endless government subsidies. Which are not free, but payed for largely by the middle class, who really cant afford it either.
Honestly, I'm not a big fan of either man, but I will vote for the leader who does not advocate for continuing to expand government, including overreach, and other "programs" that are designed to break the backs of the hardworking individuals out there, make a certain class richer, and keep the poor in poverty.
Yes it’s truly amazing that such smart people can make such foolish choices, generationally.
But at least it’s coming to a head, because as liberalism has been forced further and further left, it was always eventually going to arrive at “Kill the Jews”. It always does, historically. Jewish people are disproportionately successful, so they always make easy targets when political malpractice blows up in the face of its practitioners.
So I guess Biden just needs to make Jews poor and oppressed and they will vote for him, but if they are prosperous, like now, they will vote for Trump? Never mind the majority of American Jews consistently vote Democratic, which, per your logic would signify they are poor and oppressed...yet you say they are not. "I'm hopeful most American Jews will stick with justice as the best path to ultimate security and vote for Biden." Justice for whom, may I ask?
That's not how Jews were thinking when they joined blacks to create the NAACP. But Jews rightly felt seriously like victims themselves a century ago, when they were as hated by the Klan as blacks, as Atlanta racists had recently demonstrated by lynching and burning the Yankee Jew Leo Frank. Most American Jews were not only despised by the incredibly widespread dislike of Jews by most Americans but were also poor a century ago too. So maybe they rightly felt a sense of "victimization," and brotherhood with fellow victims, you can no longer feel. But it seems as if the recent rise in antisemitism to levels not seen in decades might make you maybe feel like you have a little more potential for victimhood than you did before Oct. 7.
Jews were always victims. America has never not been antisemitic.
Jews remain the most hate crimed demographic in the US and Europe, but how maby know this?
It was FDR who covered up the Holocaust. Eisenhower who bullied Israel out of the Sinai. Johnson that denied Israeli pact to appease fascist Arabs. Carter that inserted antisemitic Islamists in Iran. Reagan that condemned Israel for bombing Saddam's nuclear reactors. Bush who sanctioned Israel over settlements. Clinton who forced Oslo and imposed a terrorist-led PLO in control of Israeli territory.
It was W. Bush that hypocritically condemned Operation Defensive Shield while Americans were bombing Afghanistan to bits.
Obama negotiated with Israel's principal enemy behind its back, gaslit Jews on the Iranian threat, raised money for Muslim Brotherhood fascists in Egypt, throttled Iron Dome, blocked Israeli exports to Nigeria, allowed Muslims to rape Israel in the UN, and spreads antisemitic morally relativistic garbage on X.
Oct 7th should have terminated all public support for Palestinians and if they weren't fighting Jews that would be the case....instead Biden essentially appeased a terrorist organization leading to a protracted war in Gaza and emboldened Iranian Jihadist campaign.
Now the US public is undergoing 1930s-level antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Until Americans hold themselves and Islamic societies to some ethical standard instead of using Israel to launder their guilt, nothing will improve in the Middle East.
Gd...This is Obama's agenda being carried out through Joe Biden the foreign policy imbecile. There should be no reason to even consider a discussion as to which candidate stands fully for and with Israel. The attack would not have happened if Obama hadn't been allowed to executive order his way to a deadly "deal" with a terrorist country. A country that makes no attempt to hide it's desire to kill all Jews as well as Americans. The deal was dead and off the table during Trump's presidency.. Joe Biden in his petulant and idiotic attempt to be big Democrat on campus reversing most every good and great policy Trump enacted. Democrat Jews are self consumed and politically unaware. They don't know that Judaism and the Democrat Party ended with their grandparents.
I suggest that when wondering whom to vote for, Jews should start with what they think of the idea of a "cease-fire" in Gaza today. I would vote for the candidate who is not hell-bent on forcing Israel to abandon the suppression of the barbarians of Hamas. Now who could that be?
Further, a vote for cease-fire is, in my book, a vote to open the door on the eradication of Israel.
The audiences’ inability to separate a foreign national’s opinion, albeit someone originally from the US, from domestic politics is concerning and shows just how difficult things are for Jews in the US right now. We American Jews are rudderless. We need domestic leadership from the American Jewish community, not a displacement of concerns that present as false assumptions about or expectations of political alignment from a guest speaker. Neither Biden nor Trump is good for the US Jewish community. It’s time American Jewish leadership recognized that the election in the fall could worsen conditions for us and come together to figure out how we can develop strong alliances and defend ourselves no matter who is elected.
You have every right to express your opinion on the upcoming American Presidential election and to openly advocate for one candidate or the other. You have every right to formulate five questions that you believe every American supporter of Israel should consider before voting.
But to claim that the phraseology of your five questions was meant to be neutral (as between Biden and Trump) is an insult to the intelligence of your readers.
For example:
1. “Which candidate supports a permanent unconditional ceasefire in Gaza”?
The correct answer is neither but your question implies that Biden’s insistence on a temporary ceasefire in connection with a release of all the hostages is equivalent to a “permanent” - “unconditional” - ceasefire.
2. “Which candidate would commit to continue the supply of US arms and ammunition to Israel”?
The correct answer is both, but your question again implies that Biden has actually placed conditions on Israel’s supply of armaments which he has heroically resisted from day one despite immense pressure from his progressive base.
3. “Which candidate is determined to stand up to Iran and Iran’s nuclear program”?
Wonder who that might be??? Here’s another way to phrase the question — I.e., “which candidate’s maximum pressure campaign (against China, Iran and North Korea) has led to the most unstable global geopolitical condition in recent history (and the most rapid advancement in the target nations’ Nuclear threat)”?
4. “Which candidate is willing to defend Israel against charges of genocide”?
Once again the answer is both, but your question implies that Biden’s insistence that Israel prevent starvation in Gaza and evacuate civilians from Rafah (before the elimination of Hamas) is a charge of genocide instead of a desperate effort by a loyal ally to prevent Hamas’ greatest global propaganda victory (as well as to validate Biden’s steadfast support to an equally loyal ally).
5. “Which candidate opposes European efforts to impose a Palestinian State in Gaza”?
Once again the correct answer is both, but your question implies that Biden’s insistence on “day after” negotiations towards an eventual two state solution that fully guarantees Israel’s safety and security and is fully conjoined with the Saudi’s joining the Abraham Accords is somehow equivalent to European efforts to unilaterally impose a two state solution on Israel via UN resolution.
Again, you have every right to support Trump openly and in good faith but not to cleverly disguise your support via insidious phraseology.
Was Churchill ambiguous about his war goals? Was Reagan about the "Evil Empire?" The Rhetoric coming out of Washington is at best bi-polar. They are channeling Neville Chamberlain and his contortionist foreign policy. A reasonably informed person can easily infer that This administration is trying to mitigate Israel's victory. I do. One can argue that Arab culture and Eastern culture very much respect strength. The West had Iran, China and Russia in a place of stasis (at least) when the United States was perceived to be strong. That has been lost by this administration.
For some reason my validation of your points only appears later in the thread of comments.
Your points are entirely valid reasons for American supporters of Israel to support Trump over Biden
I fully respect your point of view and would equally support Michael Oren had he expressed it openly and directly (instead of using clever phraseology to disguise his true sentiments)
What Michael Oren is saying is that American Jewish voters and others genuinely concerned with the future of Israel need to make a good-faith effort to ask themselves questions that are essential to Israel's well-being, and do so as objectively as possible. That might mean putting aside personal (aka subjective) feelings toward one or both candidates. Your posts demonstrate that you are unable to do so.
I’d fully support a more neutral version of his questions
1. Which candidate insists on an immediate temporary ceasefire in connection with the release of all the hostages?
2. Which candidate is under pressure from within his own party to condition military aid to Israel?
3. Which candidate appeared weak and ineffective as he desperately begged Iran to reinstate the nuclear deal?
4. Which candidate failed to veto a UN Security Counsel Resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire?
5. Which candidate is pressuring Israel to consider “day after” negotiations towards an eventual two state solution that provides security guarantees to the satisfaction of tyr IDF and that is irreconcilably conditioned on the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords?
While these questions unambiguously favor Trump, at least they don’t disingenuously distort Biden’s actions to date
Since Obama, Democrats have been anti-Israeli. Biden is just more so. American Jews must decide are they Democrats (see below for an excellent description of what that entails) and anti-Israeli or pro-Israeli (and Republican). Why not join & try to reform the more extreme wing of GOP on the abortion issue?. Do American Jews really want to stay with the pro-Hamas, Democrats?
What part of just plain stupid is not apparent to those American Jews who believe the Demofools are for Jews and Israel; Do they not read anything that the left wing news publishes?; do they think they are immune from what may happen here after letting in approx 10 million illegals; some no doubt terrorists. What is the matter with these fools??????They remind me sadly of the German Jews who thought they were immune, too.....Wake the fffffffffffffffff up...............
I agree that it's a good sign that both sides of American Jewry objected to what you have to say, but I think that might be more a matter of the fact that we have no good choices than anything you may have said. Over the years, Trump has casually tossed about tons of antisemitic canards (e.g., "I like to have guys with yarmulkes counting my money") and he has a long history of being very cozy with neo-Nazis and far-right influencers and congresspeople who are virulently antisemitic. Besides the fact that he promises to be a dictator from day one, I wouldn't trust him as a friend of the Jews. That said, Biden may still be providing Israel with arms but he has practically dictated that Hamas has to win the current war by forbidding Israel to clean up Rafa and going along with the condemnation of the entire international community for Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, citing Hamas's propaganda as his reasoning. I assume this is because of the oppressor/victim narrative that has taken over the US and the fact that every country projects its unsolved problems onto Israel/Palestine, and as a result, to secure the black vote, Biden needs to turn on the Ultimate Oppressors, the Jews and the Jewish State. At least he has to appear to, for the superficial, while slipping Israel weaponry behind his back. And I get it, he's trying to stop the US from becoming a fascist dictatorship, the stakes are high. So yeah, no good options.
That said, on Oct. 7 when I saw that social media was flooded with posts calling Israel genocidal *even when they hadn't retaliated yet and they had actually just endured a genocide on the part of Hamas,* that besides those "death to Israel" posts were "death to the Jews" posts, I looked at the sheer number of these posts, maybe two orders of magnitude more than you would expect, and said, "This is a psy-op. These are bots." This morning I stumbled on a JNS article about the Hamas propagandist and his brother in Austria who were flooding social media with disinformation. More digging in Hacker News and Cyber News showed me information about the whole hacker and disinformation industry that has turned the entire world against Israel and the Jews. I don't believe Israel has anything similar. They do have the much-maligned Pegasus spyware but troll farms to counter disinformation, not so much.
I'm listening to podcasters and pundits such as Eylon Levy, Haviv Rettig Gur, Dan Sinor, Einat Wilf, and many others try to fight the disinformation but essentially they're speaking to the choir, mostly to sympathetic Jews. This war is being won in social media, not on the ground, and Israel and the Jews are losing. We need boots on the ground, true, but we need fingers on the keyboards. We need hackers.
Agree with 99% of your points. Yet, I’d like to offer two observations:
First, on the media strategy, the percentage of persuadable observers is tiny. No media strategy will persuade supporters of Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene (on the far right) or supporters of AOC and Elizabeth Warren (on the progressive left). The only way to influence the rare undecided observer is via our actions in Gaza (flooding the zone with humanitarian aid and evacuating civilians from Rafah) before Israel completed its stated objectives (freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas).
Second on Biden, he has steadfastly supported Israel from his first days in Washington and surpassed all of his predecessors in his immediate response to October 7th. His allegiance to Israel is as ironclad as Trump’s allegiance to himself. Yes he has been threatening and pleading with Israel on the humanitarian side (which does not conflict with Israel’s war aims) but this is only because both he and Israel desperately need to win over the last remaining persuadable voters.
I was a hardcore progressive for 30 years. I was an adamant supporter of Elizabeth Warren, and I was so disappointed when she didn't run for President. Her betrayal, as well as the betrayal of feminist and black organizations and causes I've supported my whole life pushed me, if not to the right, at least to the center. I will be voting for Biden because there is no way I can bring myself to vote for Trump. But still. So many betrayals. It is possible to get someone to shift. They just have to be paying attention.
I understand why you cannot bring yourself to vote for Trump. Neither can I, although I voted for him in 2020 because I thought the left posed an even greater threat to the United States than Trump. But in his efforts to negate the results of a democratic election, Trump exceeded my tolerance for bad character in a candidate whose policies I prefer.
But voting for Biden is not your only alternative to voting for Trump. You can vote for neither of them. It's very unfortunate that No Labels, to which I gave money, has copped out by not running a candidate. That would have given voters who refuse to acquiesce in American decline a countable way to express themselves. Still, we can all write in the name of someone we think deserves to be president. Given his betrayal of Israel, voting for Biden is just as unthinkable for me as voting for Trump.
I haven’t analyzed every statement Trump has made over his entire life, but it seems to me that Trump was praising Jewish intelligence. The guys in yarmulkes are the Orthodox Jews and they tend to be the most intelligent. Ben Shapiro wears a yarmulke. Would you like to present this representation of Trump’s anti-semitism to him in a public forum? Because I would very much like to see him figuratively dismantle every belief you ever held and crush it into powder before your eyes.
1. It's not my job or intention to try to persuade every Trump voter that I'm right and they're wrong;
2. The fact it's intolerable to you that I said I wouldn't vote for Trump tells me a lot more about you than it does about me. Why are you so insecure that someone who disagrees with you freaks you out so much you have to "crush into powder" "every belief [I] ever held"?
Sorry but I think this is a cop out. You have an obligation to speak for your country and say who you think will be better for Israel. Why, really, do you not want to?
I suggest that when wondering whom to vote for, Jews should start with what they think of the idea of a "cease-fire" in Gaza today. I would vote for the candidate who is not hell-bent on forcing Israel to abandon the suppression of the barbarians of Hamas. Now who could that be?
Further, a vote for cease-fire is, in my book, a vote to open the door on the eradication of Israel.
Any Jew that votes for Biden is insane. Forget about what he’s doing to destroy America (open borders, crime, $34 trillion deficit, obsessive focus on DEI and skin color as opposed to the quality of a person’s character, etc.) One his first day as president he removed the sanctions on Iran; for some bizarre reason he fails to strike Iran even as they or their “proxies” kill Americans and disrupt international shipping; Biden pays, trains and supplies all of Israel’s enemies including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis; he violates the US Taylor Force Act by supplying the PA with “pay for slay” money paid to the families of terrorists that kill Jews; he’s constantly pushing for a cease fire that would hand Hamas a huge win. I could go on. Trump, on the other hand, imposed massive sanctions on Iran; cut funding to UNRWA; killed Qasem Soleimani; moved the US embassy to Jerusalem (not one democrat attended the ceremony). I could go on. The republicans are Israel’s strongest ally knowing that Jews won’t vote for them. The democrats for the most part dislike Israel or openly hate it knowing that the Jews will vote for them regardless.
Everyone knows Netanyahu is one of the most corrupt people on earth. Hence his need to"reform" the judiciary God forbid he be accountable. I think you're forgetting that Netanyahu bears the responsibility for October 7th. Virtually completely. How you don't see that I'm not sure. When you have corrupt authoritarianism you have to align yourself with inept and unqualified bedfellows. Netanyahu with the extreme right. Again October 7th was on netanyahu's watch. If it were shimon Peres can you imagine the outrage from the right!? So no double standard please. So I'm supposed to trust the ass who's responsible for the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust with the appropriate response? Get off the pipe! You missed the point when folks are anti-trump. If you've been paying attention, project 2025 is an interesting read. Trump's take over of the RNC with his daughter-in-law? Straight out of Saddam Hussein's playbook. Jared got a cool couple million from the Saudis oh excuse me I meant billion. And do you think Trump has any intention of losing the election even if he loses? So pardon us if we'd rather have a democracy than authoritarian fascistic state
PS I'm Jewish, Democrat And I love Israel and was married to an Israeli.
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends"
-- Martin Luther King Jr.
I remember a few days after October 7 at a rally in Massachusetts, with both Massachusetts Senators Warren and Markey in attendance, where Markey called for "de-escalation". He was roundly criticized by a local, Jewish, elected official. But the Democratic Party effort to protect and save Hamas has continued with constant calls for "ceasefire now", regardless of the consequences later.
Is Winston Churchill remembered for his calls of "ceasefire now" to end WW2 and leave Nazi Germany in control of continental Europe?
Far more disgusting are the efforts to trivialize or deny Palestinian atrocities on Oct 7, exemplified by "Progressive" Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal's dismissal of rape crimes against Israeli women.
I use the term "Palestinian atrocities" with great precision, as Palestinian surveys repeatedly show 3/4 of Palestinians support the Oct 7 atrocities; these were not caused by an extremist minority but rather by an extremist majority. A truly democratic Palestinian state would thus be a mortal threat to Israel and to moderate Arab regimes.
https://www.jns.org/three-in-four-palestinians-support-hamass-massacre/
I see no such attempts by any significant group in the Republican party; on the contrary, there have been moving expressions, even in the last few days on the floor of the Senate, to persevere in the support of Israel and its war against Hamas.
These are uncomfortable facts for those in the American Jewish community who value their support of progressive causes like BLM and DEI more than the survival and well-being of the State of Israel.
Are you not aware that Netanyahu strengthened Hamas and was responsible for October 7th
Netanyahu built Hamas as counter to the Palestinian Authority.
That doesn't mean Netanyahu perpetrated the Oct 7 atrocities. He was at most responsible for negligence.
Admiral Kimmel didn't bomb Pearl Harbor, the Japanese did, although he too might be guilty of negligence .
The Oct 7 atrocities were entirely perpetrated by Palestinians with the overwhelming approval of the Palestinian population.
At most, negligent? That's a big N!
A kind word for what might have been an easy counterterrorism task and all of this avoided if he would have done the right thing and surrounded himself with the right people. That's not just a screw up! Like a bus driver falling asleep and taking a thousand kids off the cliff with him! The bus was the one that drove them off the cliff!
There are things you have control over and things you don't. Hamas is going to do Hamas.
He made choices and people are dying by the tens of thousands because of it. He could have prevented it. Again I'm not going to want to follow the leadership of that guy. You might but I don't. A proven screw up!
Definitely Yoav Gallant, Avigdor Lieberman or Naftali Bennett would have provided much tougher leadership that would have vaporized Hamas and its supporters.
But that's quite different from putting the blame for the Oct 7 atrocities on Netanyahu. He didn't carry them out, Hamas did and they're responsible.
"Blame the victim" is a common anti-Semitic trope, as seen recently in PA chieftain Mahmoud Abbas claiming that German Jews were trying to destroy Germany and forced Hitler to act.
And another note you mentioned Abbas blame juice for causing Hitler! This is what Putin is currently doing to Ukraine and by the way he also said that Poland forced Hitler to attack it! And Trump and the Republican party are siding with Putin. Do you really want to associate yourself with that faction? Everything the Republicans do benefit Russia. Sorry to diverge but you made me think of Putin's stupid speech. And then dumbass Trump says out loud that Russia should attack whoever the hell they want. What kind of message do you think that sends? We've got big problems with those idiots wielding any power. Single-handedly, Mike Johnson at the leash of trump is determining foreign policy in favor of Putin. Which also empowers Iran! It all ties together
Read the Abbas comments yourself, straight from the BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-66741336
Abbas has a "doctorate" from Orient University in Moscow. His "dissertation", titled The Other Side, is an attempt to show that Jews were not murdered by Germany in WW2.
Your propaganda pickled mind can't even think straight: Putin's largest revenue source is oil and gas; does he benefit from US cutbacks of LNG exports? Which president came up with that?
The problem is that neither Trump nor Biden is fit for office. America is in decline. Israel must make its own way.
You are sadly right. The Boomers have run America into the ground. They have been in charge of everything for the past thirty years but tech start-ups run in t-shirts, and this decline and ridiculous political choice is what their control of the country has come to. A disgrace, as the reductio ad absurdum of the Boomers' ruling vices, narcissism and its self-blinding, The Donald, would say.
"Ridiculous political choice." You nailed it. To depend on democracy to protect our freedom has become problematic. Oh how forward looking our founders were in making a constitutional republic. Our freedom depends on individuals recognizing that freedom is the path and to work together to further that goal, however imperfect.
Except for one of those people is a treasonous insurrectionist who would prefer that regardless of the election he should be in power. Project 2025. Read It. Both sides don't intend to disregard the election results and install loyalists. Netanyahu is the Trump of israel. Responsible for the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
It must be very difficult for you to continue but please do. I love to read you wherever I find you. I have great respect. I am a little old retired Goy in Northern Minnesota and need to hear you. Thank you.
I am not yet sure what to do but my friend summarized Team Biden accomplishments as follows:
– Capitulation to Taliban, leaving US allies behind.
– Capitulation to Iran, by restarting negotiations and sending money.
– Failure to deter Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine.
– Capitulation to Russia by not enforcing sanction and failing to provide adequate military aid to Ukraine.
– Failure to deter Iranian proxies from attacking Israel.
– Capitulation to Houthis by letting them interfere with 30% of Maritime traffic.
– Capitulation to pro-Hamas lobby nationwide.
Hmm...
I am a strong Canadian GOY looking down on America and am amazed at the stark difference between your two ( so far) presidential candidates. Ambassador Oren’s excellent speeches and opinions mark him as a top Jewish “ influencer. ” I am not an influencer, merely an observer, “Watchman, Watchman, what of the night?” I, like Ambassador Oren, cannot vote in a US election but I know in my gut that actions speak louder than words/rhetoric. On that basis the evidence solidly mounts up ( I am a trial lawyer) on the Trump side, even if I don’t like his orange hair, and the possibly unpredictable moves he may make in the future. Was it unpredictable that he would move the US embassy to Jerusalem? Was it unpredictable that he would refuse to negotiate with Iran? Was it unpredictable that there would be Middle East agreements including the Abraham accord? The man moves to his own beat to be sure, but it may be a good thing, a very good thing, especially for Israel.
Do me a favor and don't use the word goy. In Yiddish, the word is neutral. In English, the word has negative connotations and is very impolite. As a substitute, you can say Christian, non-Jew, somebody who is not Jewish, etc. I apologize for being a nudge here.
Thanx. Appreciate it.
I think Mark is being woke!
I thought it was funny. You can kind of gauge an innocent intention. Mark, get a sense of humor!
Abraham accords were very lucrative for Jared. To the tune of 2 billion. Netanyahu is responsible for October 7th. He emboldened Hamas and directly funded him. You refer to the Iranian nuclear arrangement and you are so off base. In that agreement they were much farther away from nuclear capability. To give you an idea the Secretary of energy is in charge of our nukes. Obama had Nobel prize winning nuclear physicist in the job working with his Iranian nuclear physicist counterpart to make the arrangements for how to push back the nuclear capabilities. Not only did Trump's reversal of that Accord bring Iran closer to nuclear capability but it shows the world that they cannot depend on any agreement they make with the United States. You on the right seem to completely miss the concept that even if you disagreed with the policy how dangerous it would be for the world to understand that they cannot make a deal with the United States for will be reversed by the next president. PS the rest of the civilized world was on the same side of the deal.
His hair is not orange
I didn’t realizes Clarity was meant to be an influencer blogpost. I subscribed in the mistaken belief that it had a more sacred mission (e.g., to act as an intellectually honest arbiter in an unbiased search for the truth). I guess I should unsubscribe
I agree with you that Clarity isn’t meant to be an “influencer” post. Yet Ambassador Oren states facts so succinctly and clearly, the posts cannot help but influence Jews and Goys. It is a compliment.
The current political campaign epitomizes what Peter Beinart brilliantly prophesied would tear American Judaism apart over Israel a decade ago in The Crisis of Zionism. Jews now basically face the choice of "My Israel, right or wrong" or my family's centuries-long liberal Jewish moral values. Either back Trump, Shel Adelson's anointed "Messiah" for Bibi's increasingly far-right Israel, or Biden, forced by his base to become the most critical American president of Israel in memory, breaking even more with Bibi than Obama. Adelson well knew when Trump first appeared that Israel's movement further and further to the right would be necessitated by demographics and by the Jews' determination never to change the status quo between the river and the sea. It followed for him that American politics needed a strong man like Bibi of its own who would move it well too the right more or less in tandem with Israel's movement, thus keeping America as attached to Israel as ever. Too bad the history of Jewish political ethics as far back as we can recall in America has been strongly on the left, since fights for freedom for all oppressed groups used to be a fight for complete freedom for American Jews too. But Jews now grown rich in both America and Israel, like Adelson, now seem more and more eager to make the political ethical choice that rich people have always made everywhere: security against, rather than justice for, the poor and oppressed. I'm hopeful most American Jews will stick with justice as the best path to ultimate security and vote for Biden. But no doubt many more than before will choose Bibi and Trump's approach of security without regard to justice, which, from my perspective, will be a Jewish tragedy.
I'm curious as to what of Biden's policies are specifically about justice for the poor and oppressed?
I'm a Bernie bro myself, so Biden's too moderate and neoliberal for my taste. But he did save all our lower classes with his gigantic, inevitably briefly inflation-producing emergency stimulus package to save us all from Depression in the depths of COVID. And Biden is the closest white politician to the black community in America. To me, Trump is simply a con artist perpetually pretending to be the tribune of the masses while appropriately exclusively mixing with and serving what we might call the Palm Beach Republican elite of America. Bernie's politics are those any secular Jew in the tradition of American Jewish leftism should be for. Biden listens to Bernie a bit, and has been constantly attacked for doing so. Trump is the absolute personification of the values Jew for justice, whether secular or religious, have opposed for over a century, including white supremacy the Jews founded the NAACP to fight, since supremacy always implied antisemitic as well as anti-black. There's no question that Trump richly deserves the honorific of "Messiah" for the vision of Israel personified by Bibi, the Jewish far right in America and Israel, and the late Shel Adelson. Any Jew who wants permanent separate and inferior living situations for Arabs in the West Bank and the coming Gaza totally cleansed of Hamas naturally has to vote for Trump, if that Israel is his or her number one issue. Too bad that treatment of Arabs obviously totally conflicts with the exact same human values for which the Jews' NAACP has always fought, and will put Israel at odds with most American blacks from here on out.
"briefly inflation-producing?" We're 3 years into way above-trend inflation and it's accelerating once again. Core inflation is up over 20% since Biden took office and it's still rising. Those lower prices are never coming back. Inflation is a permanent tax on all people's incomes and savings. There will be nothing brief about it - it's a permanent reset of prices. I lived through the 1970s - the costs of cars and housing never went back to their late 1960s levels.
What about the equally permanent reset of wages, which have outpaced inflation? Huh?
Real hourly wages under Biden have fallen 2.54%. Beginning in April of 2021, American workers experienced 25 consecutive months of inflation exceeding wage gains. And not everyone works for employers able to pass on higher wage costs to their customers.
If you're willing to vote for Trump, nothing I can say will change that. Unfortunately, you may well be in the majority, which will mean catastrophe for both America and the world, but the greatest possible bonus for Putin.
Lol, I was curious where you were going with your first post but abandoned your second after reading "I'm a Bernie bro myself." Good luck to you and the bros!
thanks for responding, Fred. I believe that most of this is opinion, however the policy you mentioned was the stimulus. I'm guessing you were equally positive on the 3.1 trillion of stimulus that Trump signed into law in 2020 as well? I can't say that I'm a big fan of either of these bills, especially when it comes to printing trillions of dollars to inject into an economy after both advocated for its shutdown during Covid. I think that was a huge mistake, and we knew at the time Biden signed his 1.9 trillion stimulus package how the disease acted, who it killed and had enough data to see that shutting down businesses, schools, and keeping healthy people home, etc. was not the answer. We also saw a recovering economy by this time, and if Biden had left well enough alone, more people would have gone back into the workforce instead of continuing to collect unemployment and other forms of government subsidies. (By the way, Investopedia has a great chart -https://www.investopedia.com/coronavirus-aid-relief-and-economic-security-cares-act-4800707#toc-comparison-to-the-consolidated-appropriations-act-and-the-american-rescue-plan
- that breaks down all 3 bills and how many billions were allocated to each bucket. Kind of thinking that some of it was not designed for helping those who lost their entire life savings due to govt shutdowns, etc. but political pandering. Also, let's not even mention the fraud. )
I'll also admit to being fiscally conservative, as well as was one of the "essential" job workers from the beginning of Covid, so worked throughout. I took care of plants in businesses, hospitals, car dealerships, etc. and well, plants still needed taking care of, so I was out there. Along with postal workers, janitors, security guards, Amazon delivery drivers, and grocery store workers. None of these jobs is a high paying job, and I know many people who could not pay for gas and food without finding a second job. I believe that giving a hand up to those in need is good, however its jobs that lift people out of poverty, not hand outs or endless government subsidies. Which are not free, but payed for largely by the middle class, who really cant afford it either.
Honestly, I'm not a big fan of either man, but I will vote for the leader who does not advocate for continuing to expand government, including overreach, and other "programs" that are designed to break the backs of the hardworking individuals out there, make a certain class richer, and keep the poor in poverty.
Yes it’s truly amazing that such smart people can make such foolish choices, generationally.
But at least it’s coming to a head, because as liberalism has been forced further and further left, it was always eventually going to arrive at “Kill the Jews”. It always does, historically. Jewish people are disproportionately successful, so they always make easy targets when political malpractice blows up in the face of its practitioners.
So I guess Biden just needs to make Jews poor and oppressed and they will vote for him, but if they are prosperous, like now, they will vote for Trump? Never mind the majority of American Jews consistently vote Democratic, which, per your logic would signify they are poor and oppressed...yet you say they are not. "I'm hopeful most American Jews will stick with justice as the best path to ultimate security and vote for Biden." Justice for whom, may I ask?
Justice for thee is oppression for me. Victim politics is a race to the bottom
That's not how Jews were thinking when they joined blacks to create the NAACP. But Jews rightly felt seriously like victims themselves a century ago, when they were as hated by the Klan as blacks, as Atlanta racists had recently demonstrated by lynching and burning the Yankee Jew Leo Frank. Most American Jews were not only despised by the incredibly widespread dislike of Jews by most Americans but were also poor a century ago too. So maybe they rightly felt a sense of "victimization," and brotherhood with fellow victims, you can no longer feel. But it seems as if the recent rise in antisemitism to levels not seen in decades might make you maybe feel like you have a little more potential for victimhood than you did before Oct. 7.
Jews were always victims. America has never not been antisemitic.
Jews remain the most hate crimed demographic in the US and Europe, but how maby know this?
It was FDR who covered up the Holocaust. Eisenhower who bullied Israel out of the Sinai. Johnson that denied Israeli pact to appease fascist Arabs. Carter that inserted antisemitic Islamists in Iran. Reagan that condemned Israel for bombing Saddam's nuclear reactors. Bush who sanctioned Israel over settlements. Clinton who forced Oslo and imposed a terrorist-led PLO in control of Israeli territory.
It was W. Bush that hypocritically condemned Operation Defensive Shield while Americans were bombing Afghanistan to bits.
Obama negotiated with Israel's principal enemy behind its back, gaslit Jews on the Iranian threat, raised money for Muslim Brotherhood fascists in Egypt, throttled Iron Dome, blocked Israeli exports to Nigeria, allowed Muslims to rape Israel in the UN, and spreads antisemitic morally relativistic garbage on X.
Oct 7th should have terminated all public support for Palestinians and if they weren't fighting Jews that would be the case....instead Biden essentially appeased a terrorist organization leading to a protracted war in Gaza and emboldened Iranian Jihadist campaign.
Now the US public is undergoing 1930s-level antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Until Americans hold themselves and Islamic societies to some ethical standard instead of using Israel to launder their guilt, nothing will improve in the Middle East.
Those baddies were all Democrats.
Gd...This is Obama's agenda being carried out through Joe Biden the foreign policy imbecile. There should be no reason to even consider a discussion as to which candidate stands fully for and with Israel. The attack would not have happened if Obama hadn't been allowed to executive order his way to a deadly "deal" with a terrorist country. A country that makes no attempt to hide it's desire to kill all Jews as well as Americans. The deal was dead and off the table during Trump's presidency.. Joe Biden in his petulant and idiotic attempt to be big Democrat on campus reversing most every good and great policy Trump enacted. Democrat Jews are self consumed and politically unaware. They don't know that Judaism and the Democrat Party ended with their grandparents.
I suggest that when wondering whom to vote for, Jews should start with what they think of the idea of a "cease-fire" in Gaza today. I would vote for the candidate who is not hell-bent on forcing Israel to abandon the suppression of the barbarians of Hamas. Now who could that be?
Further, a vote for cease-fire is, in my book, a vote to open the door on the eradication of Israel.
The audiences’ inability to separate a foreign national’s opinion, albeit someone originally from the US, from domestic politics is concerning and shows just how difficult things are for Jews in the US right now. We American Jews are rudderless. We need domestic leadership from the American Jewish community, not a displacement of concerns that present as false assumptions about or expectations of political alignment from a guest speaker. Neither Biden nor Trump is good for the US Jewish community. It’s time American Jewish leadership recognized that the election in the fall could worsen conditions for us and come together to figure out how we can develop strong alliances and defend ourselves no matter who is elected.
Michael Oren
You have every right to express your opinion on the upcoming American Presidential election and to openly advocate for one candidate or the other. You have every right to formulate five questions that you believe every American supporter of Israel should consider before voting.
But to claim that the phraseology of your five questions was meant to be neutral (as between Biden and Trump) is an insult to the intelligence of your readers.
For example:
1. “Which candidate supports a permanent unconditional ceasefire in Gaza”?
The correct answer is neither but your question implies that Biden’s insistence on a temporary ceasefire in connection with a release of all the hostages is equivalent to a “permanent” - “unconditional” - ceasefire.
2. “Which candidate would commit to continue the supply of US arms and ammunition to Israel”?
The correct answer is both, but your question again implies that Biden has actually placed conditions on Israel’s supply of armaments which he has heroically resisted from day one despite immense pressure from his progressive base.
3. “Which candidate is determined to stand up to Iran and Iran’s nuclear program”?
Wonder who that might be??? Here’s another way to phrase the question — I.e., “which candidate’s maximum pressure campaign (against China, Iran and North Korea) has led to the most unstable global geopolitical condition in recent history (and the most rapid advancement in the target nations’ Nuclear threat)”?
4. “Which candidate is willing to defend Israel against charges of genocide”?
Once again the answer is both, but your question implies that Biden’s insistence that Israel prevent starvation in Gaza and evacuate civilians from Rafah (before the elimination of Hamas) is a charge of genocide instead of a desperate effort by a loyal ally to prevent Hamas’ greatest global propaganda victory (as well as to validate Biden’s steadfast support to an equally loyal ally).
5. “Which candidate opposes European efforts to impose a Palestinian State in Gaza”?
Once again the correct answer is both, but your question implies that Biden’s insistence on “day after” negotiations towards an eventual two state solution that fully guarantees Israel’s safety and security and is fully conjoined with the Saudi’s joining the Abraham Accords is somehow equivalent to European efforts to unilaterally impose a two state solution on Israel via UN resolution.
Again, you have every right to support Trump openly and in good faith but not to cleverly disguise your support via insidious phraseology.
Mr. Joszef,
Was Churchill ambiguous about his war goals? Was Reagan about the "Evil Empire?" The Rhetoric coming out of Washington is at best bi-polar. They are channeling Neville Chamberlain and his contortionist foreign policy. A reasonably informed person can easily infer that This administration is trying to mitigate Israel's victory. I do. One can argue that Arab culture and Eastern culture very much respect strength. The West had Iran, China and Russia in a place of stasis (at least) when the United States was perceived to be strong. That has been lost by this administration.
David
For some reason my validation of your points only appears later in the thread of comments.
Your points are entirely valid reasons for American supporters of Israel to support Trump over Biden
I fully respect your point of view and would equally support Michael Oren had he expressed it openly and directly (instead of using clever phraseology to disguise his true sentiments)
What Michael Oren is saying is that American Jewish voters and others genuinely concerned with the future of Israel need to make a good-faith effort to ask themselves questions that are essential to Israel's well-being, and do so as objectively as possible. That might mean putting aside personal (aka subjective) feelings toward one or both candidates. Your posts demonstrate that you are unable to do so.
I’d fully support a more neutral version of his questions
1. Which candidate insists on an immediate temporary ceasefire in connection with the release of all the hostages?
2. Which candidate is under pressure from within his own party to condition military aid to Israel?
3. Which candidate appeared weak and ineffective as he desperately begged Iran to reinstate the nuclear deal?
4. Which candidate failed to veto a UN Security Counsel Resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire?
5. Which candidate is pressuring Israel to consider “day after” negotiations towards an eventual two state solution that provides security guarantees to the satisfaction of tyr IDF and that is irreconcilably conditioned on the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords?
While these questions unambiguously favor Trump, at least they don’t disingenuously distort Biden’s actions to date
Since Obama, Democrats have been anti-Israeli. Biden is just more so. American Jews must decide are they Democrats (see below for an excellent description of what that entails) and anti-Israeli or pro-Israeli (and Republican). Why not join & try to reform the more extreme wing of GOP on the abortion issue?. Do American Jews really want to stay with the pro-Hamas, Democrats?
If they're Democrats or if they are Jews
What part of just plain stupid is not apparent to those American Jews who believe the Demofools are for Jews and Israel; Do they not read anything that the left wing news publishes?; do they think they are immune from what may happen here after letting in approx 10 million illegals; some no doubt terrorists. What is the matter with these fools??????They remind me sadly of the German Jews who thought they were immune, too.....Wake the fffffffffffffffff up...............
I agree that it's a good sign that both sides of American Jewry objected to what you have to say, but I think that might be more a matter of the fact that we have no good choices than anything you may have said. Over the years, Trump has casually tossed about tons of antisemitic canards (e.g., "I like to have guys with yarmulkes counting my money") and he has a long history of being very cozy with neo-Nazis and far-right influencers and congresspeople who are virulently antisemitic. Besides the fact that he promises to be a dictator from day one, I wouldn't trust him as a friend of the Jews. That said, Biden may still be providing Israel with arms but he has practically dictated that Hamas has to win the current war by forbidding Israel to clean up Rafa and going along with the condemnation of the entire international community for Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, citing Hamas's propaganda as his reasoning. I assume this is because of the oppressor/victim narrative that has taken over the US and the fact that every country projects its unsolved problems onto Israel/Palestine, and as a result, to secure the black vote, Biden needs to turn on the Ultimate Oppressors, the Jews and the Jewish State. At least he has to appear to, for the superficial, while slipping Israel weaponry behind his back. And I get it, he's trying to stop the US from becoming a fascist dictatorship, the stakes are high. So yeah, no good options.
That said, on Oct. 7 when I saw that social media was flooded with posts calling Israel genocidal *even when they hadn't retaliated yet and they had actually just endured a genocide on the part of Hamas,* that besides those "death to Israel" posts were "death to the Jews" posts, I looked at the sheer number of these posts, maybe two orders of magnitude more than you would expect, and said, "This is a psy-op. These are bots." This morning I stumbled on a JNS article about the Hamas propagandist and his brother in Austria who were flooding social media with disinformation. More digging in Hacker News and Cyber News showed me information about the whole hacker and disinformation industry that has turned the entire world against Israel and the Jews. I don't believe Israel has anything similar. They do have the much-maligned Pegasus spyware but troll farms to counter disinformation, not so much.
I'm listening to podcasters and pundits such as Eylon Levy, Haviv Rettig Gur, Dan Sinor, Einat Wilf, and many others try to fight the disinformation but essentially they're speaking to the choir, mostly to sympathetic Jews. This war is being won in social media, not on the ground, and Israel and the Jews are losing. We need boots on the ground, true, but we need fingers on the keyboards. We need hackers.
Shelah
Agree with 99% of your points. Yet, I’d like to offer two observations:
First, on the media strategy, the percentage of persuadable observers is tiny. No media strategy will persuade supporters of Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene (on the far right) or supporters of AOC and Elizabeth Warren (on the progressive left). The only way to influence the rare undecided observer is via our actions in Gaza (flooding the zone with humanitarian aid and evacuating civilians from Rafah) before Israel completed its stated objectives (freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas).
Second on Biden, he has steadfastly supported Israel from his first days in Washington and surpassed all of his predecessors in his immediate response to October 7th. His allegiance to Israel is as ironclad as Trump’s allegiance to himself. Yes he has been threatening and pleading with Israel on the humanitarian side (which does not conflict with Israel’s war aims) but this is only because both he and Israel desperately need to win over the last remaining persuadable voters.
I was a hardcore progressive for 30 years. I was an adamant supporter of Elizabeth Warren, and I was so disappointed when she didn't run for President. Her betrayal, as well as the betrayal of feminist and black organizations and causes I've supported my whole life pushed me, if not to the right, at least to the center. I will be voting for Biden because there is no way I can bring myself to vote for Trump. But still. So many betrayals. It is possible to get someone to shift. They just have to be paying attention.
One request— please share more of your wisdom and thoughtfulness with the group. All of us need role models like you to emulate!!!
You're a sweetheart.
I understand why you cannot bring yourself to vote for Trump. Neither can I, although I voted for him in 2020 because I thought the left posed an even greater threat to the United States than Trump. But in his efforts to negate the results of a democratic election, Trump exceeded my tolerance for bad character in a candidate whose policies I prefer.
But voting for Biden is not your only alternative to voting for Trump. You can vote for neither of them. It's very unfortunate that No Labels, to which I gave money, has copped out by not running a candidate. That would have given voters who refuse to acquiesce in American decline a countable way to express themselves. Still, we can all write in the name of someone we think deserves to be president. Given his betrayal of Israel, voting for Biden is just as unthinkable for me as voting for Trump.
Or you could just stay home. It accomplishes the same thing and the end result will be that Biden’s policies will get you killed.
I haven’t analyzed every statement Trump has made over his entire life, but it seems to me that Trump was praising Jewish intelligence. The guys in yarmulkes are the Orthodox Jews and they tend to be the most intelligent. Ben Shapiro wears a yarmulke. Would you like to present this representation of Trump’s anti-semitism to him in a public forum? Because I would very much like to see him figuratively dismantle every belief you ever held and crush it into powder before your eyes.
1. It's not my job or intention to try to persuade every Trump voter that I'm right and they're wrong;
2. The fact it's intolerable to you that I said I wouldn't vote for Trump tells me a lot more about you than it does about me. Why are you so insecure that someone who disagrees with you freaks you out so much you have to "crush into powder" "every belief [I] ever held"?
Sorry but I think this is a cop out. You have an obligation to speak for your country and say who you think will be better for Israel. Why, really, do you not want to?
After all, Senator Schumer has no inhibitions about saying who he thinks is a better PM for Israel
More evidence that Oren is brighter than Schumer.
He has no such obligation.
Effective diplomats must be prepared to work with either party’s president. Declaring support for one or the other is nuts.
You are awfully naive. Cheers.
I suggest that when wondering whom to vote for, Jews should start with what they think of the idea of a "cease-fire" in Gaza today. I would vote for the candidate who is not hell-bent on forcing Israel to abandon the suppression of the barbarians of Hamas. Now who could that be?
Further, a vote for cease-fire is, in my book, a vote to open the door on the eradication of Israel.