Despite Obama’s solid support for Israel, many Israelis, unlike their Jewish-American kin, have been suspicious of our President-Elect. Prior to the election, polls showed Israeli-Americans voted for McCain at an embarrassing rate of three-to-one, while Israeli citizens at large, could they vote, favored McCain by 12% (caveat courtesy of LarryInNYC). But recent reports from the land of milk and honey reveal Obama is quickly growing on my motherland.
Gil Troy, who pens for the right-wing Jerusalem Post and is generally a tool, provides a touching recount of what we all experienced firsthand in the US:
The outpouring of emotion when Barack Obama clinched his presidential victory Tuesday night was thrilling. Little more than a decade ago, when O.J. Simpson was found innocent of two murders, cameras recorded cheering blacks and morose whites, illustrating a split-screen America.
On this extraordinary night of national reconciliation, the cameras showed blacks and whites crying together, laughing together, celebrating together, and hoping together in a tableau of healing. You would need a heart of stone not to be moved by watching the joy that swept America...
Though Troy's tone is tainted with a slight suspicion, he seems to give Obama some rare benefit of the doubt. He writes that Obama’s "calls for unity will only last if he understands that he must govern using the same expansive and moderate tone his speech set."
Those of us who have followed Obama’s long journey to becoming the next president understand that this author will not be disappointed. Like few politicians in our time, Obama has shown an uncanny ability to match his words with deeds.
Although Troy is highly skeptical of Obama’s policy towards Iraq, he unequivocally dispels the ridiculous fear that the President-Elect will somehow throw Israel under the bus. Enlisting Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff seemed to help on this front. As the author puts it:
Fears that Barack Obama will sell Israel down the river in an expression of fealty to Rashid Khalidi or other Palestinians he befriended over the years are exaggerated.
Obama has made too many strong, sincere, pro-Israel statements, and has too many pro-Israel supporters, donors, and aides for this to be a serious issue. Among many others, the man who helped Bill Clinton coin the phrase "Shalom Chaver," Rahm Emanuel, will be Obama's Chief of Staff.
The author closes with a moving welcome for President Obama:
For now, then, let us all join the great Barack Obama love-in. Let us celebrate the kind of country America is - a country that can correct its mistakes, heal its wounds, and elect a black man president. Let us honor the impressive talents that brought this self-described skinny guy with a funny name to the heights of American politics, defeating first the formidable Clinton machine then the Republican juggernaut. And let the people inspired by HaTikvah not be cynical about this new harbinger of hope. Let us hope that the hope unleashed last night can be converted into a powerful governing force that revitalizes the United States of America - for America's sake, for Israel's sake, and for the world's sake.
After a visit to Israel during the eighties, I recall thinking to myself on the plane ride back to America, "geez, my cousins are a bunch of dorks."
But, in the nineties, I was struck by how much cooler than me they’d become. I realized later that, at some point during the nineties, my Israeli cousins began adopting the hippest facets of American culture. During the eighties, Casey Kasem's top-40 hits were top-4000 hits by the time they'd hit Israel's doorstep. Now the transfer is instant.
With Obama, we see the same phenomenon occurring, as partially evidenced by what the Israeli paper, Haaretz, calls the "Obama Effect." In Israel, racism has a sad legacy that dominates to this day. In America, Obama's victory provides my son the hope generated by a president who, finally, looks like him. Minorities in Israel are also feeling this promise:
On the morning of Barak Obama's victory, Dr. Yusuf Jabrin, who works as an expert at a legal center for Israeli Arab policy, greeted a colleague with the regular "good morning." But on that day his colleague responded cheerfully by saying, "a good morning indeed, for all minorities."
Almost overnight the slogan hung up at ballots all over the U.S., "Vote, and change the world," did just that: Suddenly, minorities in Israel felt they too stood a chance.
cross-posted on MYDD