Last week, the Emergency Committee for Israel released an ad hitting President Obama on the issue of Jerusalem. The ECI said that it was planning to air the ad in Florida.
Now the Romney campaign has released a video (above) going after Obama on Jerusalem and for not having visiting Israel as president. Politico’s Maggie Haberman reports that the Romney campaign hasn’t said whether its video would be airing anywhere.
UPDATE: The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” Glenn Kessler questions the fairness of the Romney ad and another ECI ad (released late last month) hitting Obama for not visiting Israel in his first term. He gives the ads “Two Pinocchios.”
Kessler writes:
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…only four of the last 11 presidents visited Israel during their presidency, and two — Nixon and George W. Bush — waited until their second term to make their first trip. In both cases, they visited in the last year of their presidencies (Nixon resigned because of the Watergate affair shortly after his trip.)
Only Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, then, visited Israel in their first term. And of the last four presidents, two never visited Israel, one visited in his second term and one visited in his first term.
Thus Obama’s failure to travel to Israel thus far is not unusual at all.
The Emergency Committee ad also suggests that Obama has visited Arab countries rather than Israel. But the State Department records also demonstrate that every president who traveled to Israel had previously visited Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The ad also incorrectly says Obama has “traveled all over the Middle East.” Obama visited just Turkey and Iraq in April 2009, and Egypt and Saudi Arabia in June 2009. The stops in Iraq and Saudi Arabia were barely a few hours long — and Obama has not traveled at all to Middle East in the past three years. (Many of the images in the ad of Obama with Arab leaders are from international confabs held outside the Middle East.)
Indeed, George W. Bush, Clinton and George H.W. Bush were much more well traveled in the Middle East than Obama has been so far in his presidency.
