Mitt’s Mission in Israel: Optics, Christian Zionists and Absentee Ballots
The Republican candidate hopes to increase the perceived space between Obama and Netanyahu to court prized electoral groups in November. The incumbent, however, isn’t sitting idly.
There are a number of ways to understand Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel, where he pitches up Saturday night from London.
One is optics, as they like to say in Washington. The presumptive Republican nominee clearly wants to occupy the chilly space visible between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose tense personal relationship feeds the impression that Obama is cool toward not only Bibi, as Netanyahu is universally known, but also toward Israel itself. What supposed evidence of which might exist - the Cairo speech, Obama’s insisting on a settlement freeze as a pre-condition to peace talks with the Palestinians - is both receding in time and being pushed into the background by the keen, almost obsessive attention the White House has paid Israel in the last two years, in official visits, security coordination and, yes, dollars.
The latest arrived Saturday, when Obama signed a bill sending $70 million to Israel to pay for more of the anti-missile batteries called Iron Dome, the wonder technology that’s been knocking down 80 percent of the missiles fired toward Israeli cities from the Gaza Strip. Defense minister Ehud Barak promptly issued a statement of thanks, pointedly calling the aid “yet another expression of the consistent support of the Obama administration, and indeed of the U.S. congress, to the security of the State of Israel.” Such is the power of the incumbency. There will be more. Coming in October, as the fall campaign crests: The largest US-Israel joint military operation in history.