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Jewish Journal

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February 8, 2016

Recipe: Baked orange-flavored cheesecake with Indian spices

Leave a Comment / Food, Recipes /

This Valentine's Day, as you look for foods besides oysters and chocolate to woo the object of your affection, consider exploring your spice cabinet.

You'll be surprised at the flavors' powers — as natural aphrodisiacs — to be found there.

To heighten the senses and set the mood, we need fragrance and beauty in our foods.

In fact, Ayurveda — the holistic method of medical treatment in India rooted in Hinduism — traditionally placed a fair amount of emphasis on aphrodisiac terminology. The intent was to ensure that people led healthy conjugal lives and the ruler appropriately produced the requisite heir. There is similar wisdom found in other ancient texts.

So, cull through this list of common spices for your Valentine's Day menu that also may help you spice things up — in other ways — with your Valentine.

First up is cinnamon, whose lustrous and sweet aroma can make you both happy and calm. (And, it's certainly good for your blood pressure.)

Right alongside, you might have cloves, whose essential quality is to uplift your mood and spirits. And then there is nutmeg, also known for its antioxidant and astringent qualities.

An aphrodisiac spice, says 'The Arabian Nights'

To complete the fragrant collection, we also have cardamom, which “The Arabian Nights” extols for its passion-inducing properties.

All of these will find its place in a good garam masala blend. And when meshed with saffron — the exotic spice of the gods — your Valentine's Day collection of aromas will be complete.

When planning your menu, consider a good one-pot dish such as a biryani that will bring to your table all of these spices and more. If that's too complex, try rubbing a chicken with butter and garam masala and serving it roasted to perfection, with saffron mashed potatoes on the side.

But don't forget the dessert. Fortunately, many Indian desserts bring together cardamom, saffron and rose. From the universe of puddings, halwas and burfees, I have dug up a Bengali specialty called the sandesh, which, when done right, can win over the most fastidious of hearts and palates.

A sandesh is a cheesecake of sorts, with the emphasis on a specific cheese: channa, or homemade white cheese. The art of the traditional sandesh rests in the right texture and handling of this channa. Although it is prolific in Indian confectionary shops, we're often hard-pressed to find good sandesh in commercial Indian sweet shops — mainly because of the relatively short shelf life of this delicate sweet.

Spicing up cheesecake the sandesh way

Ricotta cheese, if treated right, can be a substitute for channa. This recipe features a cheater sandesh, using ricotta cheese streaked with saffron and subtly scented with freshly crushed cardamom.

I have created this recipe for days when time does not allow for the making and draining of channa. It's a fairly good facsimile for the steamed sandesh known as bhapa sandesh that my grandmother used to make. In this sandesh, instead of cooking the channa over the stove top, it is steamed with gentle and continuous heat.

In my recipe, I bake it on low heat in the oven and then cool and shape it. If you wish, you can garnish these delicate morsels with pistachios, snipped rose petals and anything else that catches your fancy.

Serve them with some chilled saffron almond milk.

That's bound to warm the cockles of your heart and soothe your senses, all at once.

Baked Orange-Flavored Cheesecake — Bhapa Sandesh

Adapted from “The Bengali Five Spice Chronicles,” by Rinku Bhattacharya

Prep time: 45 minutes

Cook time: 30 minutes

Total time: 1 hour, 15 minutes, plus time for cooling

Yield: 12 servings

Ingredients

For the cheesecake:

  • Clarified butter or ghee for greasing the casserole dish
  • 1 1/2 cups low-fat ricotta cheese (about 30 ounces)
  • 3/4 cup condensed milk (about 12 ounces)
  • 1/2 teaspoon saffron strands
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly crushed cardamom (about 2 pods)
  • 6 tablespoons fresh orange juice or tangerine juice (about one medium tangerine)

 

For optional garnishes:

  • Orange sections
  • Slivered almonds
  • Chocolate shavings

 

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 F.

2. Grease an 8-by-12-inch cake or casserole dish and set aside.

3. In a mixing bowl, beat together the ricotta cheese and condensed milk.

4. Stir in the saffron strands and cardamom, pour the mixture into the greased casserole dish. The objective is to achieve a streaked effect rather than uniform coloring.

5. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes.

6. Drizzle with the orange juice and cool for one hour.

7. Carefully invert the prepared cheesecake onto a flat surface. This can be cut into shapes using a cooking cutter, or formed into round balls.

8. If desired, garnish with orange sections and almonds, or roll or sprinkle with chocolate shavings.

9. Chill for 45 minutes or longer, and serve.

Recipe: Baked orange-flavored cheesecake with Indian spices Read More »

John Tishman, whose company built World Trade Center and other skyscrapers, dies

Leave a Comment / Obituaries /

John Tishman, an influential developer who oversaw the construction of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and Chicago’s John Hancock Center, has died at 90.

Tishman, who donated to a variety of Jewish philanthropies, died Saturday of respiratory failure at his home in Bedford, New York, The New York Times reported.

In addition to its involvement in building some of New York and Chicago’s tallest buildings, Tishman’s company, Tishman Realty and Construction, also erected skyscrapers in Detroit and Los Angeles.

Tishman studied electrical engineering at the University of Michigan and served in the U.S. Navy before joining the family company in 1948. Tishman’s grandfather, Julius, had founded the building firm in 1898.

In 2011, Tishman published a memoir, which he wrote with Tom Schachtman, titled “Building Tall: My Life and the Invention of Construction Management.”

Tishman, a New York native, gave to the UJA-Federation of New York and State of Israel Bonds, among others.

His wife, Suzanne Weisberg, died in 2005 after more than 50 years of marriage. He is survived by their two children and three grandsons.

John Tishman, whose company built World Trade Center and other skyscrapers, dies Read More »

See how teen pals found each other some 50 years later

Leave a Comment / Culture /

As a librarian, Oren Kaplan researches obscure facts and utilizes databases to track down information.

So when the Haifa resident read a recent “Seeking Kin” column about someone in his city, Menahem Orenstein, who hoped to locate a long-lost childhood buddy, Kaplan decided to put his experience to work.

Within a week, Kaplan had located Orenstein’s old friend, David Bak, living in Stockton, California, about 70 miles east of Oakland. That’s Bak, not Beck (remember the names).

Orenstein and Bak, who worked together at a Haifa auto repair shop in the late 1960s while attending technical high schools, expressed delight at reconnecting and hope to meet within a year.

Much to the delight of Kaplan, a Maryland native who works at the central library at the Technion: Israel Institute of Technology. He described the gratification he feels: “a combination of solving a crossword puzzle, winning at Bingo, inventing the light bulb and watching someone taste ice cream for the first time.”

When Orenstein called, Bak admitted to being “shocked and surprised.”

“I said, ‘Is that you, Menahem?’” Bak recalled.

Orenstein would telephone Bak nearly every day for a week, and between conversations they corresponded and exchanged pictures through Facebook.

On a 2011 visit to Haifa, Bak said he searched for Orenstein, but couldn’t remember his surname – the consequence of more than 40 years’ passage.

Since his parents moved the family to the United States in 1968 – not 1969, as Orenstein had recalled – Bak has retained a passion for cars, and not just those he repaired for a living.

In the early 1970s, he bought a 1966 Chevrolet El Camino and over the years redid its chassis, souped up the engine and repainted it several times. Eventually Bak gave the car to his son, Daniel, who lives in Sacramento and drives it most Sundays. Still, at age 50, the El Camino has traveled only 66,000 miles.

Bak also repaired and enjoyed driving a 1932 Chevrolet Model A before selling it four years ago. And he’s bought, repaired and sold many other cars.

Most of Bak’s career, though, was spent working in warehouses and being a heavy-equipment operator. Now, at 64, he’s retired. In addition to his son, he has a daughter, Rachel, who lives in Los Angeles, and a granddaughter. Later this year he’ll visit the Philippines, the homeland of his second wife. The trip after he’ll go to Israel.

He recalled his family leaving Israel because his father, Benzion, was concerned by Bak’s approaching draft age. But in America, Bak learned he also could be drafted and possibly sent to Vietnam.

Bak thought then, “Forget this – I’d rather fight [for Israel].” He nearly returned, until his U.S. military draft lottery number wasn’t called.

His family settled in Oakland because Bak’s paternal uncle, Boris, had moved there several years earlier. Natives of Poland, Benzion and Boris made it to Israel after spending 10 years in a Russian prison, where the brothers were incarcerated for fighting for the partisans. Seven of their brothers and sisters were murdered in the Holocaust. Three other siblings survived, settling in Uruguay, Israel and America.

Bak’s mother, Susanna, a native of Germany who survived the Holocaust, is now 88 and lives with Bak’s sister, Sara Horn, near Los Angeles.

Now back to Bak and Beck.

In searching for Bak, the key stumbling block for Orenstein and “Seeking Kin” was misspelling his surname Beck.

But when Kaplan tried the unconventional spelling, the dominoes fell. He searched on the websites of various public-records database aggregators, such as Intelius.com and Radaris.com, where the information matched some of what had appeared in the “Seeking Kin” column, such as the names of Benzion, who died in 2005 and is buried near Oakland; and of Susanna. Kaplan even turned up a contemporary photograph of Bak that bears a striking resemblance to the one appearing in the “Seeking Kin” article.

That image, showing the teenage Bak sitting in a 1962 Bonneville, was snapped on Oakland’s Walker Avenue, in front of an apartment building where the family lived. Bak recalled with delight that he smuggled 12 high school friends who crammed into the Bonneville’s trunk into the since-razed Union City Drive-In to watch a movie.

For Orenstein, finding Bak is a climax equaling any film.

“It’s exciting – no doubt about it. It’s the closing of a loop after 45 years. It’s nostalgia,” he said. “The decades passed – the first, second, third and fourth – and the curiosity increased. We can’t return to the days of yore, but [now] we can visit each other and share our experiences.”

Orenstein said he’ll arrange a reunion of those who once worked at Garage Express, now called Hyundai Garage. The shop’s former owner, Zeev Solomon, has pledged to attend, as has the current owner, Danny Finkelstein — his late father, Baruch, owned the shop when Orenstein and Bak worked there as teens.

Coming back, too, are several long-ago mechanics with whom Orenstein has maintained contact: Uzi Balila, Yossi Itzkovitch, Yaakov Bichacho and David Kuba.

The one who’ll make the gathering complete, Orenstein said, is Bak.

See how teen pals found each other some 50 years later Read More »

Israel could allow 30,000 more Palestinian workers into the country

Leave a Comment / Israel /

Israel will allow 30,000 more Palestinian workers into Israel if the full Cabinet approves the plan.

The Security Cabinet approved the plan on Sunday, Haaretz reported. Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon had approved it last month.

The Palestinians would be required to pass a screening by the Shin Bet security service. They would be working in construction, infrastructure, manufacturing, services and agriculture.

Only two attacks in the recent wave of terrorism against Israelis have been perpetrated by Palestinians working legally in Israel, according to Haaretz.

Unnamed senior security sources told Haaretz that a policy of reserving jobs for Palestinians in Israel has been shown to restrain terror.

Some 58,000 Palestinians have legal permits to work in Israel, and another 30,000 work in Israel illegally, according to Haaretz. Some 27,000 Palestinians work in West Bank settlement industrial zones.

Israel could allow 30,000 more Palestinian workers into the country Read More »

Israel NGO bill, seen as targeting left-wing groups, crosses first hurdle

Leave a Comment / Israel /

A bill that opponents say targets Israeli human rights groups critical of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians won initial approval in parliament on Monday with the support of right-wing parties.

Called a “transparency bill” by its sponsor, far-right Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, the legislation would require NGOs to give details of overseas donations in all their official publications if more than half their funding comes from foreign governments or bodies such as the European Union.

The United States and European Union have raised their concerns publicly and privately about the legislation as well as moves against dissenting voices in the NGO community and in the arts and media under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Opponents of the proposed law say it is discriminatory because it is mainly groups that oppose the policies of Israel's administration towards Palestinians which receive money from foreign governments and the EU.

Private funds from overseas, such as money donated to Israeli groups that support Jewish settlements on land Palestinians seek for a state, are not addressed in the bill.

In a statement before the parliamentary vote, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel called the NGO bill a “discriminatory law that harms democracy … (and) supports censorship and political persecution”.

Netanyahu, defending the legislation as “democratic and necessary”, has seemed to allude to foreign monetary support for Israeli groups backing Palestinian statehood.

Addressing members of his conservative Likud party last week, Netanyahu drew parallels with Spain's Basque country where various separatist groups used peaceful or violent means to further their cause. “Try to imagine Israel funding Basque independence organisations,” he said.

More than 30,000 NGOs are registered in Israel, about half of them active. Around 70 of those groups deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and receive funds either from the EU as a whole, or individual member governments, including Denmark, Sweden and Belgium, as well as non-member Norway.

To become law, the bill needs to pass three votes in parliament, where Netanyahu's coalition governs by a one-seat majority and carefully shores up support for its legislation before putting it on the agenda.

It received preliminary approval in the Knesset late on Monday and now goes to a committee for final drafting before a second and third vote at a separate parliamentary session.

CULTURE WARS

The debate coincides with high tensions between Palestinians and Jews as Israel grapples with near-daily Palestinian stabbings, shootings and car rammings that have hardened right-wing sentiments within Netanyahu's government.

Other rightist initiatives include an attempt by Culture Minister Miri Regev to deny government funding to any arts institution whose programmes “subvert the state”, and a campaign by an ultranationalist advocacy group against “disloyal” left-wing artists. After widespread condemnation, it was withdrawn.

Opponents have compared such proposals with U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy's campaign in the 1950s to expose Communist sympathisers, including in Hollywood and the arts.

Both Shaked, a 39-year-old computer engineer, and Regev, 50, a former army spokeswoman, are widely seen as jockeying for leadership positions in their respective Jewish Home and Likud parties, in part by rocking liberal foundations.

Once the legislation reaches a parliamentary committee for fine-tuning, lawmakers are likely to focus on the possible removal of a widely-criticised clause that would require representatives of foreign government-funded NGOs to wear special identification badges when they visit the Knesset.

Shaked has said she was determined to crack down on those groups that take foreign money and then criticise Israel, accusing some NGOs of “eroding the legitimacy of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state”.

From the point of view of advocacy groups, the bill is a dangerous step that would put Israel in a category with the likes of Russia, Turkey and neighbouring Egypt, which often struggle to accept internal criticism and have either cracked down on some NGOs, or threatened to do so.

Several weeks ago, the U.S. ambassador to Israel met Shaked to discuss the legislation and took the unusual step of issuing a statement expressing Washington's concern and the need for governments to “protect free expression and peaceful dissent”.

Peace Now, an Israeli NGO that tracks and opposes Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has called the legislation “a hate crime against democracy”.

Israel NGO bill, seen as targeting left-wing groups, crosses first hurdle Read More »

Ahead of New York Fashion Week, the Jewish prayer shawl goes chic

Leave a Comment / Culture /

Has the Jewish prayer shawl become a fashion statement?

An unidentified New York Fashion Week: Men’s participant wore a real tallit — not of the faux H&M variety— to a Tommy Hilfiger presentation last Thursday, Racked reported on Monday.

Vogue photographer Phil Oh captured the fashion enthusiast wearing a black wool coat and a black beanie to go with the dark-striped prayer shawl.

The tallit has long been referenced in retail fashion. Last month, H&M offered a near-tallit scarf that it subsequently apologized for. The company also sold a tallit-esque poncho back in 2011. Old Navy had avery similar cardigan last year.

But now a legit tallit has appeared at a major men’s fashion showcase in New York — not to mention in the webpages of Vogue. (New York Fashion Week itself runs Feb. 10-18.)

Next year, maybe we’ll see tefillin on the runway. After all, Jean Paul Gaultier made Hasidic chic work in 1993.

Ahead of New York Fashion Week, the Jewish prayer shawl goes chic Read More »

Anti-Semitism a ‘recurrent problem’ in Dutch schools, gov’t report says

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Anti-Semitism is a persistent problem in some Dutch schools and especially among Muslim pupils, according to a new government-commissioned report on discrimination in education.

The findings appeared in a 55-page report titled “Two Worlds, Two Realities – How Do You Deal with It as a Teacher,” which was published last week by the Dutch-Jewish journalist Margalith Kleijwegt at the request of the Dutch Ministry of Education.

The report, which is based on visits to schools and conversations with dozens of teachers since January 2015, say teachers sometimes feel powerless to change the deep-seated biases and violent attitudes of some pupils, including against Jews.

One female teacher of high-schoolers in Amsterdam told Kleijwegt that following a program about democratic values and against discrimination, a female pupil of Moroccan descent stood up and said: “If I had a Kalashnikov [assault rifle], I’d gun down all the Jews.” She then made shooting gestures and sounds.

Shocked, the teacher tried to make the student empathize with the Jews.

“I wasn’t getting there,” the report quotes that teacher as saying. “I asked her to imagine a 5-year-old Jewish girl who lives here. What would she have to do with Israel’s policies? Unfortunately, there was no place for empathy. The pupil didn’t care about that girl. She had only one message: The Jews should die.”

In parallel, the report also found racist behavior directed at Muslim children by some classmates, particularly following the arrival in Europe of hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East last year.

“Anti-Semitic behavior is a recurrent problem in some schools,” Kleijwegt wrote. “Some see it as a provocation [by pupils], others fear it goes deeper: That pupils receive anti-Jewish attitudes at home. The same applies to the growing group of Dutch pupils who say foreigners should rot and die. Is this provocation? Do they receive it at home?”

In the report, Dutch Education Minister Jet Bussemaker wrote that the document “shows a reality that is inconvenient and sometimes painful” but must be confronted and dealt with “in accordance to democratic values.”

Anti-Semitism a ‘recurrent problem’ in Dutch schools, gov’t report says Read More »

Oscar Nominees in Israel, Wix’s Kung Fu Surprise And More – This Week from The Startup Nation

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

Wix Teams with Kung Fu Panda for Super Bowl Ad

Sunday was Game Day and that means the best brands are set to tackle one another for the title of Best Commercial at Super Bowl. Israel’s do-it-yourself website builder platform, Wix.com, is hoping to score another touchdown with its new 30-second ad. This year’s Super Bowl commercial is actually in collaboration with DreamWorks Animation. The commercial – which is being promoted under the hashtag #StartStunning — promotes the recent release of Kung Fu Panda 3 and uses its characters to show how easy it is for businesses to create a beautiful website using the Wix platform.

“>Read more here.

Israeli Microsoft Accelerator Start-Up Gets $3.5m Graduation Gift

OwnBackup, an Israeli start-up that helps ensure that companies can back up data they generate using online applications, celebrated a double win Thursday. The company said it had raised $3.5 million in a Series A financing round led by Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors with participation from Oryzn Capital. The company will use the investment to accelerate its global growth, drive continued product innovation and significantly expand its engineering, development, sales and marketing teams, it said.

And, in a second triumph, the company, along with 12 “classmates,” graduated from the Microsoft Ventures Israel’s Accelerator, a program invented in Israel that has now spread to the rest of the world, most recently to Seattle, Microsoft’s stomping grounds.

“>Read more here. 

US, Israeli Experts Meet to Advance Disability Services

An inclusive society is a better and stronger society, said Avital Sandler-Loeff, director of Israel Unlimited, ahead of a conference held in Ma’aleh Hahamisha, west of Jerusalem, last week, promoting cutting- edge innovation in the field of disabilities.

Israel Unlimited, a partnership between the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the government and the Ruderman Family Foundation – in collaboration with the Ted Arison Family Foundation and the United States Embassy in Israel – brought a renowned delegation from the National Leadership Consortium at the University of Delaware to address a seminar tackling the most pressing issues in the field of disabilities today.

“>Read more here. 

New Search Engine to Target Anti-Semitism

The World Zionist Organization (WZO) is expected to launch its Sniper app, which it says is a search engine for anti-Semitic content. The Sniper system is set up to scan the internet using an algorithm that will identify certain keywords in different languages. A crew of WZO members will scan the results, confirm the cases that actually show real anti-Semitism, and respond with direct replies or contact authorities in the offending party's country.

WZO emphasizes the fact that the app will be monitored and supervised, so that its use will be proper, and not aimed at shaming individuals or groups without proper evidence.

“>Read more here. 

Israel, Netherlands Strive for High-Tech Cooperation

The pastoral, scenic Netherlands is not the first country that comes to mind when discussing innovation, startups, or cyber warfare. The quiet country has been diligently building a high-tech scene, with the goal of becoming a prominent player on the European stage. Still, the Netherlands remains a small figure in the high-tech world. Local enterprises raised a mere €169 million in 2014 a drop in the bucket compared to Israeli high-tech, which raised $4.4 billion in 2015.

But the Dutch startup story has an Israeli touch…

“>Read more here. 

Oscar Nominees in Israel, Wix’s Kung Fu Surprise And More – This Week from The Startup Nation Read More »

Labor Party approves Isaac Herzog’s plan for West Bank withdrawal

Leave a Comment / Israel /

Israel’s Labor Party unanimously approved a plan presented by its leader, Isaac Herzog, that would promote a two-state solution through unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank.

The plan was approved on Sunday during a party convention. Party members also voted to postpone until May discussing the date of the next leadership primary.

Herzog in a statement posted on Facebook praised the vote, adding that it is a “major struggle for the state of Israel to remain safe, Jewish and democratic.”

“We will continue with courage and triumph,” he said.

Former Labor head Shelly Yacimovich has led the public opposition to Herzog’s diplomatic plan and said she would vie with Herzog for the party leadership.

The plan calls for the advancement of the two-state solution even without negotiations toward a final agreement, Haaretz reported.

It states that “a full peace agreement unfortunately isn’t around the corner and at this stage; it’s not possible to realize the two-state vision. We must work by every means possible to preserve the two-state vision while separating from the Palestinians until it is realized.”

The plan calls on Israel to retain West Bank settlement blocs, freeze all building outside of the settlement blocs and complete the security barrier. It also states that Gaza must be part of a final agreement and  moderate Arab states must be involved in the process.

Labor Party approves Isaac Herzog’s plan for West Bank withdrawal Read More »

New Hampshire diary: The Political value of mentioning Israel in the campaign

Leave a Comment / Israel, Israel, Rosner's Domain, Rosners Domain-mobile, United States /

1.

Senator Sanders agrees: there is no need for the US to normalize relations with Iran “tomorrow.” He said this at the Democratic debate in New Hampshire last Thursday: “Who said That think we should normalize relations with Iran tomorrow? I never said that. I think we should move forward as quickly as we can.”

But what exactly is “as quickly as we can?”

Everything Sanders said suggested that he is not likely to makes things difficult for Iran if it wants to renew relations (it is not at all clear that Iran wants any such thing). “I would like to see us move forward, and hopefully someday that will happen,” he said. He also said: “a number of years ago, people were saying normal relationship with Cuba, what a bad and silly idea. They’re Communists, they are our enemy. Well guess what? Change has come.”

The 2016 Sanders and Clinton debate about Iran is somewhat of a repetition of the 2008 Obama and Clinton debate about Iran. In fact, they admitted as much as they went back to reminisce about that long gone debate in the previous decade. “As I certainly recall, the question [in 2008] was to meet without conditions. And you’re right, I was against that. I was against it then. I would be against it now” – Clinton said last week. Sanders, much like the 2008 Obama, is the no-preconditions guy. Clinton, much like the 2008 Clinton, wants to advance the talks, but carefully and wisely, without forgetting that Iran is canny and dangerous.

As in 2008 – Clinton has the more measured and more reasonable position. As in 2008, it is not at all clear to me that her position resonates politically with Democratic voters.

2.

Writers have to come up with new material every day or every week. They need the candidates to say something new, to make the race less repetitively predictable. But the candidates do not always need to say new things. A lot of times, what they do is repeat time and again the tested messages that they deem worthy and that they think would resonate with their prospective voters.

Following the candidates in such times becomes less thrilling. However, looking into the things that they tend to repeat has its own value. When a candidate believes that talking about erecting a fence against illegal immigrants in the south is something to be repeated at every campaign event – this means that this candidate believes that the fence will motivate people to vote for him. When a candidate believes that mentioning ISIS at every event is necessary – it shows that candidate thinks ISIS is an urgent political issue in the eyes of voters.

So as I follow the candidates in New Hampshire this week, one of the things I am looking for are these repetitions. Here is one from a candidate that does not seem to be doing very well:

Carly Fiorina – who, according to recent polls, is at the bottom of the GOP field – might not stay in the race for very long. As she goes, so will her promise, repeated time and again, to make her “first phone call” as President of the US to “my friend Bibi Netanyahu.”

Fiorina began using that line long ago. And she was still using it this week in New Hampshire. This means that she deems it useful – either because she thinks that her potential voters want to make sure she cares about Israel or because she thinks Netanyahu is a beloved figure among GOP voters (or because of both).

3.

In the Democratic field, nobody is using Netanyahu to promote his\her chances to get elected. But Israel is used by one candidate – an interesting decision that clearly separates Clinton from Sanders.

Of course, Clinton does not come even close to saying the kind of things that GOP candidates – most notably Marco Rubio, but also Ted Cruz and others – are saying about Israel. On Saturday night, Rubio repeated his usual line about Obama’s supposed betrayal of Israel: “he had betrayed Israel, because he believes that if we create separation from Israel, it will help our relations in the Islamic world.”

But she does use Israel, cautiously, in a similar way: to warn of a possible danger to Israel if her opponent, Sanders, will get elected. Again and again in recent weeks, including in last week’s debate, Sanders chooses to ignore Israel and refrain from mentioning it, while Clinton chooses to allege that Sanders’ proposed policies towards Iran could put Iranian troops “right at the doorstep of Israel.”

Why is Clinton doing this? We have to assume that she believes this to be the case – and is worried about Sanders’ policies. We have to also assume that in a campaign season she deems such allegations useful. Maybe Clinton made the following calculation: Democratic voters that dislike Israel are already lost to her. These are people who are deeply engaged with the left wing of the party, and there is no way for her to make them reconsider their preference. Then there are the people who have not yet decided, some of whom are staunchly progressive in their views but also care for Israel – because they are Jewish,  because they are well educated about Middle East affairs, or because of habit; remember, Israel was and still is very much a bipartisan cause for Americans.

So Clinton uses Israel as a reminder for these voters that tilting leftward on all issues could have consequences with which they might not feel comfortable – such as having Iranian forces at Israel’s doorstep. It is an interesting choice on her part, a choice that will make her the candidate of choice for most of the established US Jewish community (but not necessarily for a majority of Jews – see what happened with the Iran deal).

New Hampshire diary: The Political value of mentioning Israel in the campaign Read More »