by Susan Rosenbluth,
Editor, Jewish Voice and Opinion

November 2008

In the hours after Election Day, the media was abuzz with information about the various ethnic groups that had given the majority of their votes to President-elect Barack Hussein Obama. According to some reports, the Democrat won the support of about 70 percent of American Jews and 80 percent of Arab-Americans in the US and close to 90 percent of Americans living in Lebanon who voted for him by absentee ballots.

The only groups from whom he did not receive anything close to a majority were Orthodox Jews, Evangelical Christians, and American citizens living in Israel who voted by absentee ballots. They all voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona,

There have been no published reports indicating how American citizens in the Palestinian Authority territories in Judea and Samaria and Gaza voted, but the rank-and-file, especially in Gaza, where Hamas rules, made their feelings clear. Hamas spokesman and advisor Ahmed Yousef told WABC radio’s John Batchelor that an Obama administration would be "more fair and impartial" than the government of President Bush had been.

Mr. Yousef referred to Vice-President-elect Joseph Biden, who, in 1982, threatened then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin with an end to US economic aid if Israel did not shut down the Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, as "a great man."

Referring to Mr. Biden, Mr. Yousef said, "We do count on him also as a good partner with Mr. Obama to put the right policy regarding how to handle the problems in the region."

On Election Day in the US, many Arabs took to the streets in Gaza, firing guns and waving Hamas flags in excited anticipation of Mr. Obama’s victory.

A report that same day in the Lebanese daily, Al-Ahbar, made clear why the Palestinians were celebrating. The paper announced that, during the summer, when Mr. Obama met with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad privately in Ramallah, the then-Democratic candidate expressed his support of a Palestinian state within Israel’s current borders, that would include eastern Jerusalem as its capital.

According to the paper, Mr. Obama specifically told Mr. Abbas that he supports Arab "rights to east Jerusalem as well."

A few months earlier, in June 2008, when he spoke before Jewish supporters of Israel at a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Mr. Obama had called for Jerusalem "to remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

Less then 24 hours later, in the face of intense Muslim criticism, Mr. Obama backtracked. He said he had used "unfortunate" language when addressing AIPAC and explained he meant the city should not be divided by barbed wire. Although Mr. Obama did not mention it, the last time the city was so divided was during the Jordanian occupation between 1947 and 1967.

Mr. Obama said the Holy City’s final status would be a matter for negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, a position he seemed to contradict if the report in Al-Ahbar is correct.

According to Al-Ahbar, sources inside the PA told the paper that, at the meeting with Mr. Obama in Ramallah, Messrs Abbas and Fayyad "heard the best things they ever heard from an American President."

The sources told the paper that Mr. Obama had asked the Palestinians to keep his declarations a secret until after Election Day.

PA spokesman Nimar Hamad did not deny the Al-Ahbar report. He said he would have "no comment" other than to describe the briefing Messrs Abbas and Fayyad had given to Mr. Obama at that meeting.

"The PA views the American elections as an internal matter and does not favor one person over another," he said in an official statement. "The PA hopes that the next American President will fulfill his commitment towards the Palestinians and pressure Israel."

The report from Al-Ahbar reinforces information given by the African-American leader and Baptist minister Jesse Jackson to New York Post columnist Amir Taheri last month. Speaking from Evian, France, where he was participating in the World Policy Forum, Mr. Jackson said that, as President, Mr. Obama would fundamentally change American policy in the Middle East.

According to Mr. Taheri, Mr. Jackson said Mr. Obama would prevent "Zionists" from controlling American policy and would end "decades of putting Israel’s interests first."

"Jackson believes that although ‘Zionists,’ who have controlled American policy for decades, remain strong, they’ll lose a great deal of clout when Barack Obama enters the White House," Mr. Taheri wrote, adding that while Mr. Jackson did not claim to be Mr. Obama’s confidante or adviser, he characterized himself as "a neighbor, or, better still, a member of the family."

"We helped him start his career, and we were always there to help him move ahead," said Mr. Jackson.

He criticized President Bush for his approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Bush was so afraid of a snafu and of upsetting Israel that he gave the whole thing a miss. Barack will change that, because as long as the Palestinians haven’t seen justice, the Middle East will remain a source of danger to us all," he said.

Mr. Jackson stressed that "Barack is determined to repair our relations with the world of Islam and Muslims."

"Thanks to his background and ecumenical approach, he knows how Muslims feel while remaining committed to his own faith," said Mr. Jackson.

The Obama campaign responded to Mr. Taheri’s report by stressing that Mr. Jackson "is not an adviser to the Obama campaign and is, therefore, in no position to interpret or share Barack Obama’s view on Israel and foreign policy."

Mr. Obama’s national security spokeswoman, Wendy Morigi, repeated the candidate’s claim to "a fundamental commitment to a strong US-Israel relationship."

However, several Arab sources reported satisfaction in her statement that, "As President, he will ensure that Israel can defend itself from every threat it faces, and stand with Israel in its quest for a secure peace with its neighbors."

Some Israeli sources said that means Mr. Obama will stand with Israel as long as the Jewish state is making concessions. "If we decide there can be no more concessions, who knows if Obama will still stand with us," said a journalist trying to analyze the statement from the Obama campaign.

Ms. Morigi concluded with Mr. Obama’s pledge that, as President, he would "use all elements of American power to end Iran’s illicit nuclear program."

"No false charges can change Barack Obama’s unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security," she said.

One day later, Mr. Jackson told XM radio talk show host Joe Madison that Mr. Taheri’s column was "a fabrication."

In a prepared statement released by Mr. Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition, Mr. Jackson said that, like Mr. Obama, he favors a two-state solution and stands "forthrightly for the security and stability of Israel, its protection from any form of hostility, and a peaceful, non-violent resolution to co-existing with its Palestinian neighbors."

Nevertheless, in Gaza, Hamas sources made no secret of their hopes for an Obama victory. The sources told Al-Ahbar that they feared "new wars" would break out if Mr. McCain were to win, but, they said, they believe there will be an official peace agreement between Hamas and an Obama White House.

Some wealthy Gazans tried to support his campaign monetarily. In early October, the Obama campaign was forced to return $33,000 to Palestinians in Gaza who had purchased a large quantity of campaign T-shorts.

The discovery of the money arose from a Republican request to the Federal Election Commission to investigate thousands of small donations to Mr. Obama’s Presidential campaign. The Republicans charged the campaign with accepting donations from abroad, which is illegal.

In its report on the Republican request for an investigation, the Washington Post noted that Newsweek magazine had announced that two Palestinian brothers had paid $33,000 for a bulk order of T-shirts. Such purchases from a candidate’s online store are counted as donations.

The Obama campaign returned the money and told reporters its staff had mistaken the brothers’ address abbreviation, thinking that "Ga," stood for the US State of Georgia (GA), rather for Gaza.

Not surprisingly, the candidate who set hearts on fire among the Palestinians prompted fear among the Israelis, who, according to most reports, followed the campaign assiduously.

After Messrs Obama and McCain both visited the Jewish state last summer, many Israelis joked that their country really was America’s 51^st state. Both candidates pledged to support Israel, but the Arabs in the region sensed Mr. Obama was more eager to take their side than Mr. McCain was—and the Israelis felt it, too.

A few days before the election, a poll taken by the Rabin Center for Israel Studies showed that, among all Israelis, 46 percent would vote for Mr. McCain and only 34 percent for Mr. Obama, with a little less than 19 percent undecided.

Nearly half of the 500 Israelis surveyed—49 percent—said Mr. McCain would be better for Israel, while 32 percent said Mr. Obama would be better.

The numbers among Americans living in Israel who were eligible to vote by absentee ballot were even more lopsided for Mr. McCain. According to an exit poll taken on October 30 after Israelis eligible to vote in the election handed in their absentee ballots in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, a startling 76 percent of those polled said they had voted for Mr. McCain.

The exit poll findings of American voters in Israel were all the more surprising because les than one in four were registered Republicans, and 46 percent of registered Democrats living in Israel said they had crossed party lines to vote for Mr. McCain.

By contrast, the Republican crossover to Mr. Obama was barely two percent.

At the time, the votes were considered significant because almost half of the 42,000 registered US voters living in Israel come from Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, which were considered key swing states in this election.

The exit poll was commissioned by votefromisrael.org, an independent, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting voter registration and participation of American citizens living in Israel.

Kory Bardash, co-chairman of Republicans Abroad Israel, was not surprised by the vote, noting that, in 2004, approximately 70 percent of Americans living in Israel voted for Mr. Bush. In the US, Mr. Bush won only about 22 percent of the overall Jewish vote, but among Orthodox Jews, the number may have been closer to 80 percent.

"People who vote in Israel are typically either religious or people who care deeply about Israel," said Mr. Bardash, "It’s foreign policy and the economy that matter, and traditional liberal issues do not play so much of a role here."

Jennifer Shapiro, a 27-year-old resident of Tel Aviv who grew up in NJ, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she was supporting Mr. Obama because she favored his international outlook and his positions on American domestic issues, especially health care.

She was less concerned about his views on Israel, because, she said, the Jewish state "will do what it needs to protect itself," regardless of who became President.

Israel was one of only three countries around the world in which polls of adult citizens favored Mr. McCain over Mr. Obama. The other two were the former Soviet satellite of Georgia and the Philippines.

Concern about Israel seems to have been the key to understanding why some Jews voted for Mr. McCain and others selected Mr. Obama. In the US, the welfare of the Jewish state is decreasing as a priority for Jewish voters. Over 50 percent of non-Orthodox Jews under 35, many of whom have been the recipients of a barrage of anti-Israel sentiments on campus, admit that they would not view the destruction of Israel as a personal tragedy. Only 54 percent of them say they are even comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state.

"Jews who still find it uncomfortable to disavow concern with Israel have nevertheless convinced themselves that it is in Israel’s best interests to be forced back to the 1949 armistice lines," said columnist Jonathan Rosenblum, referring to Israel’s borders before the 1967 Six-Day War. "Those who see Israel’s salvation in its being pushed back to its 1967 borders have good reason to eagerly anticipate an Obama presidency."

This may well be Mr. Obama’s vision for Israel. He has described the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a "sore" which has "infected all our foreign policy." He said he will place return to the "peacemaking" of the Clinton years at the top of his foreign policy agenda, and the goal of that "peacemaking" has always been Israel’s withdrawal to what the late Israeli diplomat Abba Eban called the "Auschwitz borders."

In an interview with the Jerusalem Post when he was in Israel, Mr. Obama said that he could understand Israel’s desire to hold onto some of the land won in the 1967 war in terms of security buffers, but, he said, Israel should consider whether it would be worth the cost in Palestinian antagonism.

"Israel’s government must make difficult concessions for the peace process to restart," he told the Post.

Statements like that prompted at least one Israeli politician to express concern that Mr. Obama’s policies might leave Israel isolated.

National Union MK Dr. Aryeh Eldad pointed out that Mr. Obama’s pledge to evacuate US troops from Iraq very quickly will endanger Israel. In addition, Dr. Eldad said, "he is likely to pay in Israeli currency for various agreements with Arab countries."

"His declaration that he will talk with Iran essentially means that Israel will be left alone on this front," he said.

For those who did not support Mr. Obama, there is nothing much else to do but wait until he selects his Cabinet, which will be a fair indication of the direction his administration will take.

During the campaign, Mr. Obama left plenty of hints, most famously his vow to negotiate, without preconditions, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust and predicted that Israel would be wiped off the map. Under Mr. Ahmadinejad’s leadership, Iran is on the verge of developing its own nuclear weapons.

Some of Mr. Obama’s surrogates, including his running mate, Mr. Biden, have tried to soften his statement, which was made during a televised Democratic Party primary debate. They claim that when Mr. Obama spoke of meeting with Iranian leaders, he meant the religious hierarchy that controls the country’s security apparatus, and not Mr. Ahmadinejad himself.

The tape, however, shows clearly that when he was asked if he would be willing, during his first year in office, to meet separately—and without preconditions—with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, he said yes.

Mr. Obama made clear that he does not consider Iran a threat. He insisted that Iran and other current pariah states that want to target the US and Israel, are "tiny" when compared to the Soviet Union and do not pose the same threat.

Mr. Obama does not deny his call for increased diplomacy with Iran, but, he said, the goal of these talks would be to convince the Islamic Republic to abandon its nuclear program and end its support of terrorism. He said he would not take military options off the table.

Fear of how Mr. Obama will deal with Iraq prompted many of the Americans voting in Israel to select Mr. McCain, whose stand against the Islamic Republic was perceived as much stronger.

The exit poll in Israel showed that 93 percent agreed (64 percent "strongly") that if "Iran attains nuclear weapons, it will directly, or indirectly through terrorists’ getting those weapons, threaten the safety and security of the US."

When asked how they felt personally about the threat of a nuclear Iran, a full 65 percent said "very or extremely concerned."

A whopping 81 percent of the Israeli voters said that Mr. McCain was "more capable of handling the challenges facing the US regarding Iran." Even among the Obama voters, 24 percent said Mr. McCain could handle Iran better.

Mitchell Barak, CEO of KEEVOON, a Jerusalem-based research firm that analyzed the results, said the difference between American Jews and those living in Israel was the difference between concerns about the economy (the US) and survival (Israel).

"For those who live in the US, the economic crisis is more acute and has shifted the focus. For Americans living abroad, specifically in Europe, Eastern Europe, and Israel—in striking distance from Teheran—the threat of a nuclear Iran is more acute than the economic crisis," he said.

A few days before the election, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told the Israeli daily Ha’aretz that Mr. Barack’s position on Iran was "utterly immature" and based on "formulations empty of all content."

The French president said that Iran’s nuclear sites could be bombed if Teheran actually develops a nuclear weapon, but, he said, he fears Mr. Obama, as President, would oppose such a move.

At the end of October, Mr. Sarkozy told an annual conference of French ambassadors that Iran’s nuclear intentions "are without doubt the most serious crisis that weighs today on the international scene."

Trying to figure out who Mr. Obama will ask to help him with these crises has been occupying many of the President-elect’s supporters and especially his detractors, who have long been concerned that virtually none of the people surrounding Mr. Obama share the vision of Israel or the US-Israel relationship endorsed by Orthodox Jews or the majority of Israelis.

Like Mr. Obama, all the lawmakers, military figures, and policy wonks surrounding him endorse Israel’s making repeated concessions, including the evacuation of all Jews from Judea and Samaria and the re-division of Jerusalem, in exchange for repeated promises from the PA to crack down on terror and incitement.

The PA has made it clear that once the Jews are removed from these areas, prayer at Jewish holy sites, such as the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and perhaps even the Kotel in Jerusalem, will be off-limits.

Those who may well find themselves offered spots in the new administration include former President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and another Carter aide, Robert Malley, both of whom played active roles in the Obama campaign.

Mr. Zbigniew, who Mr. Obama has called "one of our most outstanding scholars, one of our most outstanding thinkers," has suggested that Israel is more of a burden than an asset to US interests. Mr. Obama has praised Mr. Zbiegniew for his efforts in brokering the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, even though most observers characterize it as very cold and brittle.

Mr. Malley, a Middle East scholar, is usually in total agreement with former Democratic Congressman David Bonior, another member of the Obama team. Both men are eager for Israel to dismantle the communities in Judea and Samaria as the first step towards the two-state solution, and have bitterly criticized all Israeli governments for their conduct during negotiations.

More than likely Dennis Ross, who played a major role in the failed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks during the administration of the first President Bush and then President Bill Clinton will also be asked to serve.

Mr. Ross, who has admitted that he failed to hold the Palestinians accountable for not living up to their commitments, is a strong advocate of pushing Israel to take "risks for peace."

Because Mr. Ross and the front-runner in the upcoming Israeli elections, Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu, reportedly do not get along (in his 2004 book, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, Mr. Ross said he found Mr. Netanyahu, who was then prime minister, "untrustworthy), relations between Israel and the US may sour.

Several months ago, before a Jewish group in the mid-West that was questioning Mr. Obama about his support for Israel, the candidate admitted that he disagreed with the nationalist camp’s perspective. He told the Jewish group that he believed he could be pro-Israel without adopting "the Likud agenda."

Many observers believe his terminology had been supplied by Mr. Ross and Daniel Kurtzer, another Jewish member of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy team who cut his teeth in the State Department working under Secretary of State James Baker.

Mr. Kurtzer, who was appointed the first Jewish US ambassador to Egypt by President Clinton and then became Washington’s first Orthodox-Jewish ambassador to Israel under the current President Bush, left the diplomatic corps in 2005 to teach at Princeton.

His public advocacy of applying pressure to Israel coupled with his harsh criticism of the state and its leaders while serving as ambassador to the Jewish state, prompted Mort Klein of the Zionist Organization of America to lobby Mr. Bush to fire him.

Mr. Ross has told reporters that an Obama administration will play a much more activist role in Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking than the Bush administration did, which is usually a code-term for demanding Israeli concessions.

That should suit one of Mr. Obama’s most senior advisers, Gen Merrill "Tony" McPeak, who has blamed the American-Jewish community for the lack of progress towards peace in the Middle East.

In 2003, when The Oregonian asked him to assign blame for the stalled Middle East peace process, Mr. McPeak responded, "New York City. Miami. We have a large vote here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it."

Although Mr. Obama denounced the quote, he pointedly did not ask Mr. McPeak to leave his campaign.

Observers say that Anthony Lake, who served as Mr. Clinton’s national security adviser and was an early supporter of Mr. Obama, has aspirations of assuming that post once again. A recent non-Orthodox convert to Judaism, he supports urging Israel to make concessions but has said that rallying the international community to isolate Iran would be Mr. Obama’s first foreign policy priority.

Mara Rudman, who served as a deputy on Mr. Clinton’s national security team, could also be selected by Mr. Obama. Since leaving government, she has served as a deputy to former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleberger while he was chairman of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims.

She earned her left-of-center stripes by helping to launch "Middle East Progress," a group that puts out a thrice-weekly email bulletin whose purpose is to counter the Daily Bulletin edited by the Conference of Presidents of Major American-Jewish Organizations, which Middle East Progress sees as too politically conservative.

While much has been made about Mr. Obama’s willingness to reach across the aisle to enlist the aid of Republicans in his administration, two of the veteran legislators he is considering will probably motivate the Arabs who are already excited about his victory.

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), who is retiring and whose wife endorsed Mr. Obama, and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IND), who serves as the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, could be offered positions in the new administration.

Mr. Hagel is remembered best for telling participants at an Arab American Institute dinner last year that his support for Israel is not "automatic." Like Mr. Hagel, Mr. Lugar is a frequent critic of Israel in Senate hearings, and he also advocates direct dialogue with Iran.

"It’s amazing," said a NJ Republican insider. "With all the Republican choices Obama has, he selects two of the virtually only anti-Israel characters on the roster."

While they may not show up on his short list of Cabinet nominees, some of his former colleagues in organizations such as ACORN and Chicago’s Trinity United Church, may also have roles to play.

During the campaign, Mr. Obama publicly ended his relationship with his former pastor, Rev Jeremiah Wright, who in tapes that were sold in the church’s gift shop, spewed contempt for Israel, which he denounced as a colonial state; the US, whose own actions and policies, he said, were responsible for the terrorist attacks on Sept 11; and white people in general.

Although Mr. Obama was a member of the church for 20 years and had called Mr. Wright his "spiritual mentor," the President-elect now claims he never heard his pastor make such offensive statements.

It is also unclear what, if any, role unrepentant former Weatherman William Ayers might play, or former PLO official and current Edward Said Professor at Columbia University Rashid Khalidi, whom Mr. Obama has publicly credited with making him aware of the plight of the Palestinians.

The Weather Underground, which was founded by Mr. Ayers, carried out jailbreaks and bombings in the US in the 1960s and ‘70s. While Mr. Obama was just a child when the Weather Underground was active, as an adult, he worked closely with Mr. Ayers who publicly acknowledged that his only regret was not being able to do more damage.

At first, Mr. Obama and his supporters claimed Mr. Ayers was simply "a guy in my neighborhood," whom Mr. Obama barely knew. When it became obvious that their connections were too strong and numerous to be denied, the campaign portrayed him as just a Vietnam protester who, in his later years, became a respected, mainstream professor.

The book, Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism, was written by Mr. Ayers, his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and other members of their terrorist group, in 1974 as the "political statement of the Weather Underground." Filled with revolutionary rhetoric and descriptions of the Weathermen’s violent illegal activities, the book makes clear that their goal was to inspire a bloody mass uprising against the US government in order to establish a communist "dictatorship of the proletariat."

The book by Mr. Obama’s friend issues a call for an end to all US support for Israel. "Our silence of acceptance of pro-Zionist policy is a form of complicity with US-backed aggression and terror, and a betrayal of internationalism," wrote the authors.

One of the radicals to whom the book is dedicated is Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian-American assassin who murdered Robert Kennedy in a Los Angeles hotel when he ran for President in 1968.

In the last days of the current campaign, thousands of Israel’s ardent supporters in the US, most of whom also supported Mr. McCain, demanded in vain that the Los Angeles Times release a 2003 videotape purported to show Mr. Obama speaking of his friendship with Mr. Khalidi, who served as a spokesman for the PLO when the organization was still recognized as a terrorist group bent on destroying Israel.

In April 2008, the Times reported that Mr. Obama attended a farewell party in 2003 honoring Mr. Khalidi who was leaving the University of Chicago for Columbia. According to the report, Mr. Obama delivered a speech at the event and spoke warmly about Mr. Khalidi and their relationship.

It has been reported that while Mr. Obama himself did not criticize the US or Israel at the party, others at the event issued scathing attacks against Israel and the US while Mr. Obama sat by quietly.

"He didn’t get up to leave. He wasn’t roused to a defense of his country. He didn’t deliver a spirited condemnation of Islamic terror. He just sat there. And when it came his turn to speak, he spoke glowingly about Khalidi. He was clearly comfortable around the agitators and, equally crucial, they were clearly comfortable spewing their bile in front of him, confident that they were not giving offense," said Andrew McCarthy writing in the National Review Online.

Those who wanted to see the videotape were certain it would show images of Messrs Obama and Khalidi and perhaps Ayers together.

LA Times editor Russ Stanton said the paper refused to allow the public to see the tape because "it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it."

He said the paper "would have preferred to be able to post the video, but could not get the source to agree."

"If we had not reached this agreement, we would not have had access to this tape at all. Then no one would have ever known Obama attended this event and spoke at it. We were pushing to say the most we could and to present the most we could to readers about what happened," he said.

The Times also refused to provide a transcript of the tape.

Mr. McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov Sarah Palin, accused the LA Times of "kowtowing" presumably to the Obama campaign. "What we don’t know is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country he now professes to support," said Mrs. Palin, referring to Israel.

Michael Goldfarb, a spokesman for Mr. McCain, characterized the refusal to hand over the tape as further evidence of pro-Obama media bias.

Throughout the campaign, Mr. McCain’s supporters accused mainstream media outlets of all but coming out and endorsing Mr. Obama. By the end of the campaign, most of them did.

Mr. Khalidi, still a professor at Columbia in New York, refused to comment on the story or on his friendship with Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama’s aides countered by downplaying the candidate’s relationship with Mr. Khalidi and pointing out that he is not one of Mr. Obama’s advisors. Further, they said, Mr. Obama does not share Mr. Khalidi’s political views.

In Israel and the US, those who support keeping the Jewish state whole, with all its holy sites intact, wait, worry and hope for the best. What else can they do?

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