On at least one issue, there's already a clear winner in the US presidential elections -- Israel.
No matter who wins the elections on Nov. 2 -- US President George W. Bush or his challenger Senator John Kerry -- Israel can continue to count on the unlimited support of the White House. It's the one point where the two men seem to actually agree.
But while anti-Semites and Palestinians see the hand of a ubiquitous "Jewish lobby" at work in the US, in reality, US presidents have always had quite other motives in their strong alliance with the Jewish state.
The 6 million Jewish voters in the US have a relatively small influence on the US elections. New York, California and Massachusetts, which have large Jewish populations, are already established as long-time Democratic fortresses. At the most, Jewish voters could tip the scales in hotly contested battlefields like Florida, although so could any other ethnic minority group.
As an ethnic group, Jews carry a much larger weight traditionally in the world of finance, in the film industry, in the media, in science and many academic professions. But even there, US Jews are hardly a homogeneous group and represent a wide variety of political opinions.
While US Jews are bound together by their conviction that securing the existence of Israel is essential, so are the majority of non-Jewish Americans. Israel is a naturally close ally of the country for a variety of reasons -- as the homeland for the millenia-long persecuted Jews, as the only democracy in the Middle East and as the outpost of the free world amidst an increasingly aggressive and problematic Islamic-Arabic world.
Among the strongest advocates of Israel in the US are the conservative Christian evangelicals. For them, Israel is not only the Promised Land for the Jews, but also the birthplace of their own spiritual leader, Jesus Christ.
As a voter group, US Jews, who already tend to vote Democratic, are particularly torn this year. Among liberal Jews, Bush is a particular object of scorn and skepticism despite his support of Israel.
Jewish intellectuals like film maker Woody Allen and writer Philip Roth see the Bush presidency as a "political disaster." And even billionaires and financiers like George Soros are spending millions of dollars to make sure Bush doesn't return to the White House.
Despite the strong emotions against Bush, no Republican president since Ronald Reagan has received more support from Israel than Bush.
Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Bush the country's best friend in the White House in modern history.
And Sharon can count on Bush for backing in even his most unilateral decisions, such as the building of the wall along the West Bank and the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.
Much of this situation stems from the influence of the so-called neo-conservatives who include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and former advisor Richard Perle, both of whom are Jewish. They have put their imprint on the "Bush doctrine" of preventive war and on the offensive drive against terrorists, extremists and enemies of the US.
In the minds of many "neocons," who had been itching to remove Iraqi president Saddam Hussein from power long before Bush entered the White House, the US and Israel share exactly the same political interests.
Israel was the biggest cheerleader of all US allies when Bush gave the go-ahead to invade Iraq -- not only because of Washington's so-called "blind loyalty" to Israel and the Jewish lobby, but also because of the recognition that "the enemies of Israel are increasingly identical with the enemies of the United States," officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the main pro-Israel lobbying organization, said.
Democratic Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings and his colleague, Congressman James Moran, have charged that Bush only went to war in Iraq because of "Jewish interests" -- which brought a resounding protest in the leadership of the Democratic Party.
There's no doubt about the power of the Israel lobby in Washington. The wealthy pro-Israeli umbrella group, AIPAC, is described as Washington's "700 pound gorilla." The organization documents every vote in Congress and makes sure legislators who don't support Israel face well-funded opponents in the next election.
But the success of the Israeli lobbyists is most clearly seen in US policies since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Bush and Kerry do not talk of a "clash of cultures" but rather see the US in a global war against extremism in the Islamic-Arabic world, in which Israel and the US are usually mentioned in the same hostile breath.
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