The Great Debate: Part 2

Me and Mitt in Israel, at the BYU Jerusalem Center

Tomorrow Gov. Romney and Pres. Obama are going to have their first debate against each other. They'll discuss many things, but one thing they won't debate on--and there is one reason why.

The Israel Lobby.

The Israel Lobby is one of, if not the most, powerful lobby group that affects our policy making. Despite breaking international law again and again as they build settlements and their wall (think of the Berlin Wall being rebuilt, just in Jerusalem this time), the US government and their leaders continually support them. It's political suicide not to.

Living in Israel for four months made the conflict in the Middle East much more real. Before traveling to Israel, people were shocked I was going. "Aren't you afraid you're going to get blown up? Those Palestinians are crazy." Hardly. Palestinians are normal, very friendly people. But if you were living in the Gaza Strip watching your children starve the death because nothing can go in or out, you might consider becoming a suicide bomber out of desperation to just fight back since there was nothing else you could do but watch your children die.

Honestly, most of the local people who befriended BYU students were the Palestinians. Most of the Jews we met in Jerusalem were very standoff-ish. The Israeli people are the most militant I've ever seen. Everyone, both men and women, are required to spend so many years in the Israeli Army when they come of age. As we walked around Jerusalem, it was strange to see so many young people walking around in uniforms with huge guns (not the little handguns policeman use--imagine more like a machine gun) hanging off their waists. And the only time I felt seriously threatened during my stay there was when a Jewish taxi driver pulled out a gun and pushed it into the ribs of my friend sitting in the front passenger seat, because he dared to voice the opinion that, "You can't say all Arabs are bad people."

I find it a total irony that the Republicans, the party most opposed to welfare, are also the most pro-Israel. It seems like total hypocrisy. We can't afford to give our own citizens welfare, but we can afford to give the equivalent of $500 to every man, woman, and child in Israel every year? That's how much our foreign aid totals up to on average in the last decade or so--$3 billion a year. It's also given in a lump sum payment at the beginning of the year, and not given in installments like the rest of our foreign aid, which means the US government has to pay much more interest on Israel's foreign aid that we borrow to pay for (costing tax payers $50-$60 million a year since it is given as a lump sum).

The book "The Israel Lobby" makes a very good case that the main reason we went into Iraq in 2003 was because Israel wanted us to take them out. Now Israel wants us to take on Iran. I seriously worry about another Republican president plunging us into another war because of their pro-Israel stance.

Pres. Obama, although not perfect, has done a really decent job in foreign policy. He kept us mostly out of the events of the Arab Spring and has spoken out against Israeli settlements that are continuing to be built. He's kept a harder line against Israel than any president since President Carter (who wrote an excellent book on the subject of Isreal, "Peace Not Apartheid"), and I'm happy to see that--although if you look at the polls, he's almost completely lost the Jewish vote in America.

Romney, on the other hand, I seriously worry about his foreign policy veiws. As a person, I love Mitt Romney. He's a very good friend of my father's family, and newspaper articles mention the influence my grandfather had on Mitt (ha ha :). He's a hard worker, honest, and a family man in the truest sense. But. . .

I was in Israel when he came to visit 2007. He supports the Israeli government and their violations of basic human rights without almost any reservation. His niece was my roommate while we lived in Israel, and we talked about his views on supporting Israel. She shared that even she didn't support his foreign policy views when it came to Israel, especially after the injustice we saw the government inflicting on the Palestinians who had lived there for generations.

One thing I found interesting, that both our Jewish and Palestinian teachers in Israel agreed on, was that they could speak out more against the Israeli government in Israel than they could in American. Even many Jewish people in Israel thing that their government is to harsh. Why does the government continue then? Because American Jewish people support the harsh stance against the Palestinians. They don't see them as people the way the Jewish people in Israel see some of their neighbors. And our Palestinian teacher said he could speak out against his government there, but in America he'd instantly be labeled an "anti-Semite" if he tried to say the same things here. Despite our right to "freedom of speech," the Jews are quick to cut out any criticism by labeling and silencing them with the label of "anti-Semite." (I must add, many of the Jewish Israelis I have known as a personal basis are exceptional people--I just don't agree with their government).

When it comes down to it, I'm still not 100% sure who I'm going to vote for president on November 6. Do I vote for a really good man? Or do I vote for someone who could save thousands of lives by keeping us out of another war in the Middle East?

That's all I have to say. If anyone is interested to learn more about our foreign policy and politics in general Ron Paul's book "The Revolution: A Manifesto" is an excellent, easy read that I would recommend to anyone. If you are into more drab stuff then "The Israel Lobby" is for you, although I couldn't really get past the first 50 pages (but that is where most of the information is). And "Peace Not Apartheid" by Carter gives a really good picture of what Israel has done in the last 60 years as they formed their country.