Alex Kane: Israel the 51st State?

Critics of the Israel lobby's influence in US politics often say, tongue in cheek, that Israel should be named the 51st state. But this presidential election season, that sentiment comes close to the reality of how the Republican Party is treating the country. Israel, like the 50 states in the US, will be a source for votes and money and a backdrop for presidential campaigning. The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) has partnered with an Israeli group to encourage Israelis who are American citizens, including West Bank settlers, to vote in the 2012 elections. The effort is also being promoted by a group called Republicans Abroad Israel. The partnership, and presidential candidate Mitt Romney's plan to visit Israel in late July, makes clear that the Republicans will use President Barack Obama's policy towards Israel as a cudgel to score political points and woo Jewish voters and donors, though most American Jews vote Democratic. The politicking about how Obama is an "anti-Israel" president obscures the reality that Obama has not touched the sacrosanct US-Israeli alliance, and has continued to lavish aid and diplomatic support to the Jewish state. Approximately 250,000 American citizens live in Israel, and many of them lean right. According to the Los Angeles Times, 75 percent of Americans in Israel voted for John McCain in the 2008 election, essentially the same share of American Jews who voted for Obama overall. RJC and a group called iVoteIsrael, whose mission is to encourage Americans who are also Israeli citizens to vote in US elections based on"who will support and standby Israel," held a number of events in Jerusalem in early July promoting their campaign. RJC executive director Matt Brooks and Ari Fleischer, an RJC board member and the former press secretary for George W Bush, were the ringleaders of this effort, and they wasted no time criticizing Obama's Israel policy.