TO MY FELLOW JEWS

One of the key indicators of Bush’s impending victory on November 2nd is a historic shift in Jewish voting habits. American Jews in unprecedented numbers will cast their ballot for a Republican president. Cliff Alsberg, a writer and television producer in Los Angeles, has written this compelling essay addressed to his fellow Jews still struggling with their reflexive compulsion to pull the Democrat lever. -JW

I am writing to you today as members of my “extended family”—my family of fellow Jews and fellow Americans with whom I most strongly identify and who I most cherish.

Never before have the stakes in a presidential election been greater for us; both here at home and abroad. Never before has there been a clearer choice between two candidates, and never before has so much depended on us– both as Jews and as Americans.

I’d like to address six key issues that invariably affect each of us as both Jews and Americans. I urge you to read and to “listen” to these issues with an open heart and an open mind. If you are truly “undecided”, I implore you to dig deep within your heart to weigh the consequences of your vote. If you are already a staunch Kerry supporter, I respectfully ask you to remain open and intellectually honest for the duration of this letter.

Three Key Foreign Affairs Issues:

1. Were we right to invade Iraq?
If you argue that, to date, no weapons of mass destruction were found and, therefore, we were wrong to invade that country, you have won your point strictly on its “debating” merits, but you have missed the point entirely as a Jew. Why? Because as a people, we care far more about actions and results of actions than we do about “intention”. It is true that our own domestic intelligence agencies were wrong about Saddam’s weapons, as were the intelligence services of the entire western world. But in the aftermath of the war, with over 3,000 mass graves discovered so far, it turns out that we have freed some 25 million Iraqis from one of the single most brutal, repressive and murderous tyrannies on earth.

A good result based on faulty intelligence.

By contrast, I’ll give you the opposite scenario with an analogy that should strike much “closer to home”. During WWII, both Roosevelt and Churchill refused to bomb the crematoria at Auschwitz or the railroad lines leading towards them. This was the militarily “correct” decision at the time based on British and American intelligence “correctly” advising both countries’ leadership that since tens of thousands of elite German troops were busily engaged in the systematic annihilation of Europe’s Jewry, why “distract” them from their “work” and free them up to fight our allied soldiers on the front lines?

A horrific result based on accurate intelligence.

Jewish compassion for others demands that we weigh results over intentions! As Jews, we must base our conclusive opinions regarding the Iraqi war on the inarguable facts that– 1) Saddam was using weapons of mass destruction to commit genocide against his own people; 2) He was actively financing terrorism against our people by paying families of Palestinian suicide bombers $30,000 for each attack; 3) His decade-long refusal to comply with 17 consecutive UN resolutions ordering him to disarm made him an unacceptable threat to world peace, and — 4) Given his Gulf War I scud missile attacks, Iraq was a strategically dangerous and demonstrably proven enemy of Israel in particular.

The President was completely justified in his actions against Saddam.

2. Which candidate best understands the true nature of the War on Terrorism?
Senator Kerry maintains that invading Iraq was a huge mistake and a costly diversion from our real goal of hunting down Osama Bin Laden—the “real” threat to the world. This most current position of his has validity only so far as his underlying assumption is true — i.e., worldwide terrorism is directed by a group of turbaned fanatics hiding out in caves somewhere along the Afghani-Pakistani border. It is a disturbingly myopic view that presents terrorism as a local, or, at worst, a regional problem.

But this underlying premise is both logically and factually false. Every day we are, quite literally, bombarded by reports of assaults in as far-flung and disparate locales as Saudi Arabia, Jakarta, Spain, Iraq, Bali, the Philippines, Russia, Africa and, of course, Israel. Rather than attributing these ongoing attacks to a single organization, the world community has come to identify this global threat by its true essence — Islamic-Fascism.

This president fully understands the true nature of our present global conflict.

3. Which candidate would be a better friend to Israel?
Senator Kerry has repeated innumerable times his intentions to go to the UN as the final arbiter in international disputes and the final authority for our projection of US military power. As Jews, we are well aware of the unique history of the United Nations’ all-pervasive attitudes and formal resolutions passed vis-à-vis Israel. The UN has categorically proven itself — to us Jews and to the world — to be a morally bankrupt organization filled with bitter, repressive, anti-Semitic and anti-American nation-states who have, time after time, undermined virtually every strategic US foreign policy position.

Is this the organization an American president should turn to? Would this policy be in Israel’s best interests, let alone America’s? Senator Kerry has told the Arab-American League that Israel’s fence was completely unjustified and “humiliating” to the Palestinian people. “We don’t need another obstacle to peace!” was his famous line from that rather infamous speech. Two weeks later he told a group of Jewish leaders that Israel had the right to defend itself and that the fence was, indeed, justified.

By contrast, our President has never wavered. He has, instead, proven time and again to be the best friend Israel has ever had. He has supported Sharon’s more popular stands against the Palestinian insurrection as well as his less popular policies such as targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders and the proposed unilateral Gaza troop withdrawals. And, unlike his predecessor, President Bush has never met face-to-face with Arafat—not once!

Whether the President’s unique bond with Israel is forged by his close, personal friendship with Prime Minister Sharon, his appreciation of the strategic importance of Israel as a staunch, U.S, ally in a Middle Eastern sea of tyranny or his deep, religious conviction that Israel has a special, sacred destiny to forever remain the physical and spiritual homeland of the world’s Jews, President Bush has inarguably proven to be Israel’s best American friend.

Three Key Domestic Issues:

1. The economy: Has it improved over the past four years?
One could successfully argue that it is a miracle that we’re not locked in the throes of a total depression! There is no way to spin this economy as “bad”… Given the post-dot.com recession the President inherited from the previous administration combined with the devastating attacks of 9/11, our economy is in stunningly robust shape by any objective, quantifiable yardstick. National unemployment is stabilized at approximately 5.4%, inflation is stabilized and, as a direct result, interest rates remain at an all-time low. Monthly housing starts continue at a dizzying pace, the dollar is strong, corporate investment (inventory, hiring and physical expansion) has grown steadily for the last twenty consecutive months, the Dow remains at or near a firm 10,000 and the average American family has seen its income tax burden lightened significantly. In terms of gross national product (our total economic output as a country), we have out-produced the entire European Union by a growth rate of ten to one!

By all accounts, any president who could so successfully steer our economy through such treacherous, catastrophic circumstances deserves our utmost respect, gratitude and support.

2. Domestic security: Is our country any safer?
Theories, rampant rumors, sobering punditry and wild, speculative fiction aside, the unassailable litmus test remains — Have we suffered any additional attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11? This is not as simplistic and tautological a question as it might sound. After spending billions of dollars on security, ramping up our intelligence-gathering resources at breakneck speed, prosecuting two consecutive wars some ten thousand miles away, interdicting and seizing terrorist funds worldwide and making numerous arrests around the world, we are now reaping the benefits of massive strategic planning and brilliant execution, coupled with our leadership’s unflagging commitment to utilize every available global resource. Fully two-thirds of the Taliban have been destroyed or captured, as have vast segments of the Al Qaeda network. Yes, we are truly safer, and we sleep far better at night knowing the caliber and superiority of our Armed Forces and our leadership.

3. Have we managed to maintain our distinctly American “moral compass”?
Here’s the tough one—the elusive yardstick by which we judge our conduct here at home and around the world. This is our “litmus test”, after all, since it is we Jews who have taken the Almighty’s moral directives and passed them on to a dark and desperately flawed world.

Which candidate comes closest to adhering to our own Torah standard? In whose hands would you trust the future of our children? There are emotionally charged issues to consider when pondering these questions. Is our nation better off sanctioning homosexual marriages and rampant abortions? Are we a better people — both as Jews and as Americans — for refusing to label evil as evil and good as good? Does denying the application of standards of decency in our speech and in our actions somehow morally elevate us?

As members of the five million Americans whose ancestry gave our nation its moral identity as a Judeao-Christian society, I would hope and pray that we all agree that President Bush has evidenced strong character, remarkable clarity and great moral courage in his steadfast leadership.

On a final note, given our traditionally Democratic backgrounds, casting our Jewish votes for a Republican is not an easy choice to make. It seems to fly in the face of every “political” value we were raised with — “Republicans never care about the little guy—they’re only looking out for the rich!”, “They’re a bunch or racists and anti-Semites and we can’t even get into their #@*!!* country clubs!”, etc. We’ve all heard the same lines, I’m sure…

But in a volatile world like ours, facts on the ground often change quickly and dramatically. The world is a far different place now than what it was some fifty years ago, and the Democratic Party is definitely no longer the party of Scoop Jackson or Jack Kennedy. It is decidedly not the party our parents grew up with — not unless our parents currently identify with the likes of Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore, Howard Dean or Al Sharpton. As Dennis Praeger often remarks—“I never left the Democratic Party; the Party left me.”

Our Talmud teaches us that we should consider each and every Mitzvah we perform as though the fate of the world hung in the balance. And as we’ve indelibly learned from the presidential election of 2000, every individual vote indeed turned out to be pivotal and decisive. Yet once again, the Almighty has placed us on the fulcrum of history — a moment in time of such powerful and historical consequence that the way we consider voting on November 2nd could well determine the future course of Western Civilization. As Jews living in so-called “battleground states”, your votes might very well be the deciding factor.

It is a monumental challenge and an awesome responsibility. May we consider our actions wisely and may we go from strength to strength!

May G-d bless our nation, its armed forces and its leaders, and thanks to all of you for “listening”.

Cliff Alsberg
Los Angeles, California