Jonathan Freedland: America Forgets the World

The two candidates competed to be Israel’s best friend. While Romney referred to “my relationship with the prime minister” and upbraided Obama for failing to visit the country during his first Middle East tour as president, Obama recalled an earlier trip that took in the southern, rocket-hit town of Sderot and the Holocaust memorial institute Yad Vashem. One does not need to resort to myths of Jewish might to understand this display. The simpler explanation is that in the Obama era the Republicans, and Romney especially, have taken an issue that used to be broadly consensual and sought to exploit it for partisan advantage. Hence Romney’s claim in his convention speech that Obama had thrown Israel “under the bus.” That has left Obama on the defensive, forced to spell out his record of staunch support for and military co-operation with Israel, which he did again on Monday night. If Romney believed there were votes to be had in casting Obama as soft on Cuba, they’d have sparred on that too.

Mein Blog befasst sich in einem umfassenden Sinn mit dem Verhältnis von Wissen, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft. Ein besonderes Augenmerk richte ich dabei auf die Aktivitäten des Medien- und Dienstleistungskonzern Bertelsmann und der Bertelsmann Stiftung.