Candidates and the `Kishkes Factor` -- Obama struggles for the pro-Israel vote -- Israel News

Israel e News, Israel
February 29, 2008


I can think of a few reasons why Barack Obama will struggle for the pro-Israel vote.

Let’s get the touchiest out of the way first: racism. Obama’s opponents will jump up and down denying this, but some of the anti-Obama feeling is a legacy of the unhealed breach between blacks and Jews. The painful divorce brought out the worst in both sides: troubling rates of anti-Semitism among blacks that grew along with educational achievement; disturbing tendencies among Jews to make no distinctions among black leaders, from racist lunatic Louis Farrakhan to bumbling New York City Mayor David Dinkins.

That’s one reason why Obama will never convince his antagonists that he doesn’t share his pastor’s sympathies with Farrakhan.

Maybe they’ve grown spoiled, but you hear in the pro-Israel, anti-Obama rhetoric the notion that Obama’s spotless Senate voting record on Israel and meat-and-potatoes speeches to AIPAC are not quite enough. “Window dressing,” as someone dismissively described it to me. A certain kind of pro-Israel voter wants to know that candidates feel for Israel in their guts — their kishkes — and not just in their heads.

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