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The ‘Six Point’ plan for Jewish votes

By Ami Eden · December 14, 2007

Rob Eshman, editor of the L.A. Jewish Journal, has a great column this week about what candidates needs to do if they want to appeal to Jewish voters. The keys: pander on Israel; offer one good way to reduce our dependence on oil; be a Nixon environmentalist; ix-nay on the esus-Jay; don't hate government, hate bad government, and take the Iranian nuclear threat seriously.

As it turns out, the column comes the same week that the American Jewish Committee released its annual survey of Jewish opinion – and the numbers back Eshman up on several points.

* Rudy Giuliani scores well on all six points, and not only does he have a much higher favorable ratings than the other Republicans – he finishes second overall behind Hillary Clinton.

* An incredible 82% of American Jews think that it is very important for the U.S. to achieve energy independence and another 17% say it is somewhat important. And the overwhelming majority want an environmentally friendly way of getting there.

* By a margin of 57%-35% American Jews oppose U.S. military action against Iran. But 92% are either somewhat or very concerned about Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.

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Reform Politics

By Ami Eden · December 14, 2007

Check out this audio dispatch from Ben Harris, who is one of two JTA reporters at this week's biennial convention of the Union for Reform Judaism. It's a politically active, extremely liberal crowd of several thousand Jews – and, not surprisingly they're buzzing in the hallways about the elections and cheering in the auditoriums about the need to stop any more conservative judges from getting on to the Supreme Court.

Click the play button below to listen.

[audio:/images/archive/121407_eden_harris_urj.mp3]

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