Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

George Bush for President ... of Israel?
Tuesday, February 13, 2007

I wrote a few months ago about how great I think Michael Oren is, based on his previous book Six Days of War, about the Six Day War. I have just been sent a copy of his new book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy, about the U.S. in the Middle East. I haven't read it yet, but I intend to. Now I see, courtesy of the folks over a Jewlicious, that he gave this quote in an interview to the Forward:

“If it hadn’t been for George Bush between 2001 and 2005, I’m not sure the Jewish state would have survived,” Oren said. “Because when the bombs started going off at the end of the Clinton administration, Israel was not given much latitude to respond to Palestinian terror. A year into the Bush administration, after 9/11, Bush started giving an unqualified green light to the IDF to go in and smash terror. By doing that, they created a situation where the tourists came back, foreign investment came back. The fact that you could walk down the street as a tourist in Jerusalem today owes a lot to the Bush administration. But the Bush administration owes a lot, in turn, to evangelical backing. So how am I to gainsay that this particular community helped save the lives of my family?”

Wow. So he would take Bush and the war in Iraq as a better situation for Jews in Israel than the deal that Clinton was trying to push through and containment for Iraq. Hard to believe.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 7:03 AM
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