October 21, 2004

Jewish skullcaps adorned with a campaign slogan for President George W. Bush are displayed in a store window in Jerusalem's Mea Shearim neighborhood October 21, 2004. Split over the presidential race, most Israelis support Bush while Palestinians back his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry.

Israelis, Palestinians at Odds Over U.S. Election

If Israeli settler Rachel Saperstein could decide the outcome of the U.S. election, President Bush would beat Democratic challenger John Kerry by a landslide.

But Gaza shopkeeper Abu Gomaa hopes instead to see Bush's re-election bid go down in flames on Nov. 2. "I want to laugh ... at his humiliation," he says.
[Abu means he'd like to laugh the way he and his fellow Muslims laughed and celebrated in the Paleostinian areas on 9/11 at our "humiliation" at the hands of Al Queda.--Jen]

Locked in a bloody conflict dragging into its fifth year,
[Al-Reuters won't admit it, but the Intifada is really over and the Paleos lost!]
Israelis and Palestinians both have a big stake in who governs in Washington and holds sway in Middle East diplomacy.

Yet rarely have they been more sharply divided over an American presidential race. "In this land of irreconcilable differences between Arabs and Jews, you can add one more thing they can't agree on," a U.S. diplomat said.

Opinion polls show that Israelis stand alone internationally in their rock-solid support for Bush, considering him the best ally the Jewish state has ever had in the White House.
[That's right, my Israeli friends--God has been blessing us all with George Bush's presidency!]

Leaving little doubt that this sentiment reaches to the very top, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon even managed to forget Kerry's name briefly during a recent newspaper interview.
[Too funny!
sKerry's such a tool and Ariel Sharon is a very smart man who's taken JFK's measure and found him wanting.--Jen]

On the other side of the divide, Palestinians who once had high hopes for Bush now bitterly oppose him.
[This is Al-Reuters/Muslim speak for this: "Paleostinians once had high hopes that Bush would be as big an idiot as Bill Clinton and do what they, and especially their leader Arafat, wanted."
Araf*rt's now officially weighed in for Kerry, in hopes that he'll take the Paleo-Israeli situation back to the "Sept. 10"/Clinton state of affairs and that a "President Kerry" will have sheets put on that bed in the White House guest room so that Yasser can come "home."
Given what a craven coward and thug-lover I think Kerry is, this is probably a safe bet on Arafat's part.--Jen ]

Their hostility has been fed by Bush's perceived green light for Israel's military crackdown in the Palestinian territories, his diplomatic isolation of their leader Yasser Arafat and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Despite that, Palestinians only cautiously prefer Kerry. They hope he will take a more even-handed approach but see him as unlikely to seriously rethink America's Middle East policy.

For his part, Kerry has taken pains to reassure American Jewish voters that he would be as pro-Israel as Bush, even sending his brother, a convert to Judaism, as an emissary to ease any Israeli concerns.
[Don't let it escape your attention that Kerry doesn't have the b*lls to go to Israel himself nor has he had the guts to go to Iraq in the past 18 months either!--J.T.]

HOLDING THE UMBRELLA

In Israel, where attitudes have been hardened by a campaign of Palestinian suicide bombings and other attacks, Bush's "war on terror" has won an enthusiastic following.

While polls show much of the world hostile to Bush and his Iraq policies, Israelis back him by a ratio of two to one -- a sign of gratitude for neutralising their strongest Arab foe.

"Israel loves the president because he holds the umbrella that protects it from its enemies," wrote Shmuel Rosner, a columnist for the Haaretz newspaper.

Living in the heavily fortified Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip, Saperstein regards Bush as a hero.

"Who else could keep a terrorist like Arafat in isolation and throw Saddam Hussein in jail?" the 63-year-old grandmother said. "Bush wants Israel to be safe from Muslim terror."
[President Bush wants the world to be safe from Muslim terror!]

Though astonished at Bush's endorsement of Sharon's plan to evacuate Gaza settlements next year, she fears a Kerry administration would push for a handover of even more of the occupied land that she sees as Israel's by biblical birthright.
[Leave it to Rooters to put a lower case "b" for Biblical!
Not only was that land given to the Hebrews thousands of years ago by God according to His Word, but the Israelis won it (back) by military action in the 20th Century.]

Palestinians are not so much enamoured of Kerry as embittered by what they see as Bush's pro-Israel bias.

They are furious with him for agreeing that Israel should be allowed to retain large swathes of the West Bank and bar the return of refugees under any future peace deal.

As the presidential race tightens, many hope to see Bush humbled on election day. "I want to see him bow his head in defeat and lower his arrogant tone," said Gomaa, 40, as he attended customers in his electronics shop in Gaza City.
[God willing, that's a sight you'll never see, Hadji!]

But few Palestinians believe Kerry would take a more active peacemaking role than Bush, who backed away after seeing his "road map" peace plan shredded by violence.
[The President basically put the ball in Arafat's court and stated that the Paleos could have an indepedent state if they'd eschew terror, but Yasser purposefully kept using terror attacks.
So any blame goes on Arafat and not on Bush.]

Like Bush, Kerry has made scant mention of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in speeches and debates except to vow that he will safeguard Israel's security.

"They are competing to win the affection of the Zionist entity," said Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, an Islamic militant group sworn to Israel's destruction. For the Palestinians, he says, "either of them is a losing choice."

IMHO, President Bush deserves re-election for his Israeli policy alone--ever since his Rose Garden speech on March 24, 2002, he completely changed the dynamics of the Israel-"Palestinian" "conflict" by thinking outside the box, refusing to use the moral equivalence and stinking thinking that has suffused the situation for almost 60 years and had kept it a "quagmire" without end or solution.
Israel is now able to deal with the Paleos for the IslamoNazi mass murderers that they are, whereas Presidents like Clinton and Carter treated them as justifiably outraged "freedom fighters."
We don't talk about the "cycle of violence" anymore and the "peace process" and I'm tickled pink about it!
I never thought there'd be a solution to this in my lifetime and now the possibility of a real peace in Jerusalem is actually becoming real.
If the Paleos really wanted a state, they'd adopt the Quartet's road map to an independent state by giving up Islamist terrorism and embracing democratic elections of their leaders and the rule of law, but no.... they just can't!
And their goal remains the murder of every Jew and the eradication of the state of Israel, which is why their people continue to dub it the "Zionist entity."
President Bush had read his Bible and he knows that God said, "He who blesses Israel, I will bless and he who curses Israel, I will curse."
With Bush as President, we're doing not only the theologically and morally right thing by backing Israel, but in geopolitical terms, we're acknowledging that it's land that they've fought for and won more than once and they're the only democratic island in a sea of Arab Islamic tyranny (something we're changing right now in Iraq, with reforms possibly underway in Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Jordan with our Liberty on the March!).
Check out how entrenched Dimocrat and presidential candidate Sen. Joe Lieberman praised President Bush to a group of Jewish Democrat voters in PALM BEACH, FLORIDA!
Lieberman Praises Bush, Chides Kerry

Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman took the unusual step of praising President Bush while chiding John Kerry during a campaign stop in Florida Wednesday.

Lieberman, with just three weeks left before the election, praised Bush strongly for his support of Israel, America’s lone democratic ally in the Mid-East.

"We are dealing with a president who's had a record of strong, consistent support for Israel. You can't say otherwise,” Lieberman told an audience of 600 near Delray Beach, Fla, the Palm Beach Post reported in editions Thursday.

Lieberman also added that any criticism of Bush vis-à-vis Israel would be “unjustified.”

Lord love Joe--if it weren't so late in the game, he'd probably do a "Zell," but he sold out too much when he ran as Algore's running mate and he's in too deep with the DNC.
God will continue to bless us as we stand by His Chosen People in Israel.
I'm proud that President Bush has made this stand and that he recognized fully that with the 9/11 attacks, Israel's fight become our fight.
Together, we will see victory, peace and freedom reign in the Middle East.