HOW SHOULD JEWS VOTE?

How Jews should vote? By Dennis Prager
There are overwhelmingly powerful Jewish reasons to vote forPresident Bush and equally powerful Jewish reasons not to vote forJohn Kerry.

To understand this, I need to explain the word "Jewish." It means two things: that which concerns Judaism and its values, and that which concerns Jews as a distinct ethnic people. Whichever definition one chooses, the case for the re-election of President Bush and the rejection of John Kerry — and of the left, which along with radical Islam is the Jews' great enemy in our time — is overwhelming.

Regarding the second definition, the one issue that overwhelms all others is the security of Israel. For identifying Jews, there is an acute awareness that a generation after the extermination of one out of every three Jews in the world, the Jewish state, though as small as New Jersey, is indispensable to the security of the Jewish people. Just about every Jew recognizes that if Israel had existed in 1933 or even 1938, there would not have been a Holocaust.

In light of this preoccupation with Israel's security, identifying Jews, both liberal and conservative, have always been united on behalf of Israel's battle for survival. And it has been a battle since the day modern Israel was created in 1948. The Arab world (and since 1979, Iran, too) wants Israel destroyed. No country in the world is delegitimized except for Israel. The world's left and much of the Islamic world routinely deny Israel's, and only
Israel's, right to exist as a Jewish state. The United Nations itself did this when its General Assembly passed its infamous "Zionism is racism" resolution, which meant that Israel has no more right to exist than did apartheid South Africa — to which the left, the Palestinians, and other Muslims and Arabs routinely compare it.

Only the United States has protected Israel since 1967, when the Jewish state fought one of its many wars for survival against Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Therefore, which ideology and what type of man governs America is a matter of life and death for Israel. And most Jews know this.

Until now, it has not much mattered who was president. Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican George Bush (the father) were not among Israel's greatest friends. But right now, Israel's greatest presidential friend, George W. Bush, is running for re-election against a man who, though he does not harbor Jimmy Carter's hostility to Israel, has views of the world that can only endanger Israel.

In a nutshell, John Kerry's primary foreign policy goal is to get America into the good graces of the European Union (specifically France and Germany) and the United Nations. He regards America going it alone in the world as an American calamity.

On the other hand, George W. Bush believes that becoming popular in the EU and in the United Nations would morally compromise America's values and ultimately endanger America. Only an American president who does not place great importance on American popularity and who has a realistic view of the immorality inherent in international institutions such as the world court and the United Nations will stand behind Israel. Nearly all the world's governments are prepared to abandon Israel because of their dependence on Arab oil or their fears of their Muslim population and the threat of Islamic terror.

George W. Bush marches to the beat of the drummer who asks, "What is right?" and not to the beat of the many drummers who ask, "What is popular?"

Yes, there are issues beyond Israel's security that animate the vote of Jewish Americans. That is why Jews who are leftists first will, understandably, vote for the leftist candidate. The majority of Jews, liberal or conservative, understand why Israel needs America. And for them, the choice should be utterly obvious.

That is why former congressman and New York City Mayor Ed Koch, a liberal Democrat, has announced that for the first time in his life he will vote for a Republican president. That is why Al Gore's mentor, Martin Peretz, editor in chief of The New Republic, which in its 80-year history has never endorsed a Republican for president, just wrote an opinion piece warning those who care about Israel about John Kerry. And that is why every American Arab and Muslim group that is anti-Israel is supporting John Kerry.

SEE ALSO: Op-Ed: Kerry flunks the reality test: Republican Sen. Norm Coleman lays out why he believes American Jews ought to vote for President Bush in the upcoming presidential elections.

ST. PAUL, Minn., Oct. 20 (JTA) — Debates are a chance for the candidates to speak without scripts and show what they truly believe. And in the first presidential debate, John Kerry made a revealing comment: While making a point about the war in Iraq, Kerry said that, as president, he would make sure America could pass a “global test” before defending its interests. Kerry’s threshold for action is being able to “prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.”

Subjecting foreign policy and national security decisions to John Kerry’s “global test” would have a critical effect not just on America’s ability to defend itself, it would dramatically affect the security of one of our most loyal allies, Israel.

A troubling proportion of the global community considers Israel a racist, illegitimate state. Some of the leading diplomats of the European community, who publicly tolerate Israel’s existence, in their parlors and their cafes dismiss Israel with scatological terminology. When international bodies have the opportunity, they ban the presence of Israelis wherever possible — Israeli athletes, Israeli academics, Israeli scientists, Israeli businessmen and Israeli diplomats can all attest to this. And this is the community to which Sen. Kerry (D-Mass.) would kowtow on matters of national security and foreign policy?

Kerry predictably has sent his Jewish political allies to vouchsafe for his pro-Israel bona fides. They say his fealty to Israel is non-negotiable. But does Kerry have the ability to tell the European community, as President Bush has done repeatedly, that anti-Zionism is a modern and savage form of the ancient evil of anti-Semitism? Does Kerry have the gumption to personally confront soft allies over anti-Israel, anti-Semitic epithets, as President Bush did to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed? Would Kerry tell his secretary of state, as President Bush did, to abruptly leave an international conference that had become a public lynching of Israel? Does Kerry have the willingness to tell Arab states that American support for Israel is not a bargaining chip as we seek to win their cooperation in Iraq?

President Bush faced that very same quandary in spring 2002 when Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank. Arab nations blamed Israel’s actions for their inability to join the coalition then forming to confront Saddam Hussein.

But President Bush didn’t budge: The United States has vetoed eight anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N. Security Council. With that support, Israel effectively destroyed many of the terrorist cells that had plotted slaughters in buses, cafes, and Passover seders in Israel.

By comparison, Kerry, his running mate Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and their foreign policy advisers have shown that they would rather focus on detente and diplomacy than on protecting their friends. But we know from experience that sometimes saying “No deal” to one’s enemies is more effective than saying “I’ll compromise.” President Bush understands this, and John Kerry does not.

Jews who are Democrats may not yet grasp this, but clearly Israel’s enemies do: The Jerusalem Post reported last month that the Palestinians likely will wait until after the election to present a U.N. resolution calling for sanctions over Israel’s West Bank security barrier “in the hope that if John Kerry wins, the U.S. may not cast a veto.”

A telling point: The world knows what it’s getting with George Bush. But it has different expectations for John Kerry. Fundamentally, John Kerry’s foreign policy instinct is to negotiate, to deal and to bargain away strengths. Thus Kerry’s 1980´s fantasy that unilateral disarmament would defeat the Soviets; the opposite was true. Thus his mistaken belief that the Sandinistas represented the democratic will of the Nicaraguan people; the Nicaraguan people demonstrated the exact opposite.

Thus Kerry’s 1990s fantasy that Yasser Arafat was a “model statesman”; he was a master terrorist. Thus his theory that the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 wasn’t worth fighting, and the second Gulf War wasn’t worth funding. Wrong again, on both counts.

Ask Israelis whether they believe the removal of Saddam was a mistake — or that this war, as both Kerry and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean say, was “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

But Kerry is most egregiously wrong when he says American foreign policy must meet a “global test.” America’s support for Israel should never be contingent on a permission slip from France, Germany or the United Nations. Any president who subjects America’s alliance with Israel to a “global test” knows exactly what he will get: Total failure.