If the opportunity is lost, it may not return for many years, until there again are such clear differences on Middle East policy between the Republican and Democratic candidates. Today there are, at most, 5.5 million Jews in the United States. That s just 2 percent of the 275 million residents of the United States. Zionist leaders boast that Jews provide well over half of the political donations to Democratic candidates in the United States. They also provide a significant share of Republican donations, though these are far less essential to Republican candidates because the Republicans can turn to a wider selection of other special interest lobbies than can Democrats.
Votes are the other part of the story.
Most American Jews vote for Democratic over Republican candidates. But how many members of the Jewish community vote for the Democratic candidate at the presidential level is largely determined by the candidate s stand on Israel. Then in 1996 Bill Clinton got 88 percent of the Jewish vote against Bob Dole because the Israeli press had labeled Clinton the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history and because of the extraordinary number of Jewish appointments made by the Clinton administration, particularly in the foreign policymaking establishment. In 1996 Muslim and Arab Americans cancelled each other out. There are between six and eight million Muslims in the U.S., and perhaps as many as two million Christian Arab Americans, whose opinions on the Palestine problem, and the necessity of keeping Jerusalem open to all members of the Abrahamic religions, are the same as those of their Muslim brethren.