Is the Green Movement-Meimad the little counterweight that could (help tremendously)?

As an American historian, I instinctively dismiss third parties. In American elections they usually are spoilers. At best, they fulfill the role the historian Richard Hofstadter identified, serving as bumblebees, stinging larger parties, injecting their ideas like toxins into the system, then dying. In Israel, at best, third parties have been comets, illuminating an issue brilliantly but fleetingly, then crashing and burning. Usually, Israeli third parties are like rotten eggs, their stench creates a strong presence you cannot ignore even though most voters wish the politicians would. Yet in this desultory but critical election campaign, with three flawed candidates leading three tired political parties, third parties may once again shape Israel’s future. And one party in particular - the Green Movement-Meimad -- may play a particularly constructive role.

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Polarized Jews in a depressing election

Political campaigns are like social stress tests, regularly scheduled exercises that add enough extra pressure on the system to expose weaknesses - and strengths. The long 2008 election has uncovered certain American fault lines. Within the Jewish community, the results of the 2008 electoral stress test have been equally sobering. Partisans from both sides have behaved abominably, demonstrating a growing hysteria and close-mindedness.

Perhaps the most infamous Jewish contribution to this campaign is unproven. Many reporters have claimed the various e-mails accusing Barack Obama of being a Muslim targeted Jews or originated with Jews. There is no solid proof of this. Internet hoaxes, like most urban legends, are hard to track. But anytime I have written anything remotely positive about Obama in the Jewish media, many bloggers have charged that "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" is secretly a Muslim and I am helping this Manchurian candidate deceive America.

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Obama at his worst - and his best

On Tuesday, Senator Barack Obama's speech on race in America tried to quell the controversy over his America-bashing, race-baiting, Israel-hating pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. For days, video clips of Wright spewing his poison threatened to neutralize Obama's populist magic. Until Tuesday, the controversy showed Obama at his worst. His response to his pastor's demagoguery was mealy-mouthed and disingenuous. It was impossible to believe Obama's Clintonesque claim of ignorance, that he never "sat in the pews" during one of Wright's wrongheaded riffs. And Obama's failure over a twenty-year relationship to criticize his mentor's venom stirred doubts about Obama's judgment, patriotism, and commitment to the unity he celebrates. Yet once again, Illinois' rookie Senator hit a grand slam with two strikes against him. Obama's speech was thoughtful, thought-provoking, rich, complex, effective, poetic, and inspiring.

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Walk in the footsteps of JFK

Clarifying Barack Obama's stance on Israel is secondary to figuring out how he understands the world. As the Obama Phenomenama grows, many who are not completely starry-eyed fear his foreign policy may be too starry-eyed. The 46-year-old senator's foreign policy can best be summarized in two words: "Leave Iraq."

Echoing the 1960s' get-out-of-Vietnam movement, this approach risks perpetuating the delusions of the Clinton 1990s he usually rejects, ignoring the ugly realities facing post-9/11 America.

As a former community organizer, Obama cares most about domestic issues. His experience overseas is limited - beyond his oft-distorted Indonesian sojourn when young. Like most Ivy League-educated idealistic Americans, he assumes compromises can be found for every foreign conflict, while viewing "evil" as a right-wing Republican spectre not a force in today's world. And considering how high he has soared with his charisma and eloquence, he naturally assumes he can handle any world leader, one on one.

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Making elections real events not 'pseudo events'

Perhaps the best thing that happened in the marginal, unrepresentative Iowa caucuses was that Senator Barack Obama defied all that media speculation about Senator Hillary Clinton's "inevitability." Perhaps the best thing that happened in the marginal, unrepresentative New Hampshire primary  was that Senator Hillary Clinton disproved all that media speculation about Senator Barack Obama's momentum. The results for Republicans were similarly surprising, with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee supposedly coming from "nowhere" to win in Iowa, and Senator John McCain "coming back" to win after pundits pronounced his candidacy dead. The 350,000 citizens who caucused in Iowa and the half a million or so New Hampshirites who voted in their state's Democratic and Republican primaries reminded the pundits that even in modern America's "mediaocracy," the power remains with the people.

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