via memeorandum
A recent pro-Obama video has some of the Israeli officials who appeared in it upset, for they feel that it misrepresented their views.
Former head of the Mossad Ephraim Halevy and former IDF deputy chief of staff Maj.-Gen. Uzi Dayan accused the group of taking their words out of context, saying that when filmed they had been told that the issue at hand was the challenges facing the next man in the White House, and not that the film was aimed at endorsing Obama for president.
“It’s not only misleading, it was an interview about what the next president was going to have to deal with,” Dayan told The Jerusalem Post, “and to know that they used this interview and took [only] five seconds [of it], and put me in a list of people praising Barack Obama…
Shmuel Rosner points out that the video’s less a problem because it misrepresents Sen. Obama, than that it mis-represents Israel.
Again, the problem with this clip is not that it gives a misleading impression of Obama. It’s the impression it gives about Israel that’s wrong. Yes, one can find some Obama supporters among the ex-officials of the Israeli Defense forces, but they will be in the minority. One of them, Amnon Shahak, is shown in both clips. Shlomo Brom, Yossi Alpher and Shaul Arieli – names most Israelis (and surely Americans) will not recognize – are all knowledgeable, respectable people, but can be usually counted on to be in opposition to most things the Israeli defense establishment believes.
Gens. Brom, Alpher and Arieli (as well as Naomi Chasan, who is also mentioned as being on the video) are all supporters of J-Street a “pro-peace, pro-Israel” organization that is closely tied to Sen. Obama.
Still this doesn’t mean that the misrepresentation was done by the Obama campaign, but by a group that supports Sen. Obama.
Rosner’s point is reiterated by Israel Matzav:
This is especially significant because, as I noted in the earlier post, Dayan is the only one interviewed with ties to a party on the right of the political spectrum, and it was Dayan who allowed the video’s makers to claim that the generals interviewed were from “across the political spectrum.”
Two other retired generals who were interviewed – Amram Mitzna and Giora Inbar (who is also now apparently a US citizen since he said he would vote for Obama), stood by the comments, although they too admit that they had no idea why they were being filmed. The rest of the JPost article I linked above is a rehash of yesterday’s JPost article about the video.
More at Daled Amos.
The truth is that the last polling numbers I saw actually showed that Israelis prefer Sen. Obama to Sen. McCain by a small margin. I forget where I saw them. I believe that those polls even had him leading among Likud voters. I don’t recall who the polling organization was, though I find those numbers surprising. (Of course, that does not mean that they’re wrong.)
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
