Why Marco Rubio And Ted Cruz Think Israel Is A Winning Issue Against Donald Trump
During Thursday night's Republican debate, moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Donald Trump to explain why, in a recent interview, Trump had said he'd be "neutral" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ted Cruz had raised the subject earlier, and teed off once he got a chance to address the topic.
--CLIP
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to the United States to address Congress last year, though, we saw that attitudes toward Israel were different, depending on political allegiances. Republicans have long sympathized more with Israel than the Palestinians, according to data from Gallup, but shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the split between the parties grew much wider. For a party that emphasizes national security, maintaining the security and strength of Israel -- which was the explicit argument Netanyahu made against the Iran deal — is an obvious priority.
But there's another aspect to it. In 2014, Pew Research posed the Israelis-or-Palestinian questions to Americans, and two trends are obvious. The more conservative the respondent, the more that person backed Israel. And the more evangelical he or she was, same thing.
"A significant majority of American Evangelicals believe that God is a keeper of His promises and that the "Promised Land" belongs to the Jews in belief and unbelief, in obedience and in disobedience, forever," Land wrote. "[W]e are also admonished to support the Jews if we want to be blessed individually and collectively as a nation. ... God has promised to bless those who bless the Jews. I believe, as an Evangelical Christian, that the Jewish return to their current homeland in the twentieth century was, and is, a fulfillment of biblical prophecy."
MORE...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/26/why-marco-rubio-and-ted-cruz-think-israel-is-a-winning-issue-against-donald-trump/
= new reply since forum marked as read
