Michael B. Oren is a TNR contributing editor, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and a visiting professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present . As an Israeli citizen living in America for the year, I can't help getting caught up in the whirlwind of this country's presidential election. But as my home country chooses its new prime minister today, I find myself drawing many similarities between the two contests. Gender is certainly a factor in both--with Tzipi Livni currently leading the polls--as is ethnicity, with the Iranian-born Shaul Mofaz vying to become Israel's first non-Western prime minister. Israelis are also familiar with the candidacy of a 72-year-old maverick with combat experience--indeed, they would reelect Ariel Sharon tomorrow were he to miraculously emerge from his coma. And yet, on a more visceral level, the two elections could not be more different. I've been watching Obama, McCain, and their surrogates debate undoubtedly important issues, such as the country's general direction, its social and economic policies, and the time it will remain in Iraq. In Israel, the stakes are no less than its survival: the future of the territories Israel captured four decades ago, the retention of which threatens its basic security and the demographic balance on which its existence as a Jewish state depends. For that reason, Isra ...
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Michael B. Oren is a TNR contributing editor, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and a visiting professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present . As an Israeli citizen living in America for the year, I can't help getting caught up in the whirlwind of this country's presidential election. But as my home country chooses its new prime minister today, I find myself drawing many similarities between the two contests. Gender is certainly a factor in both--with Tzipi Livni currently leading the polls--as is ethnicity, with the Iranian-born Shaul Mofaz vying to become Israel's first non-Western prime minister. Israelis are also familiar with the candidacy of a 72-year-old maverick with combat experience--indeed, they would reelect Ariel Sharon tomorrow were he to miraculously emerge from his coma. And yet, on a more visceral level, the two elections could not be more different. I've been watching Obama, McCain, and their surrogates debate undoubtedly important issues, such as the country's general direction, its social and economic policies, and the time it will remain in Iraq. In Israel, the stakes are no less than its survival: the future of the territories Israel captured four decades ago, the retention of which threatens its basic security and the demographic balance on which its existence as a Jewish state depends. For that reason, Isra ...