THE emergence of Mr Pat Buchanan as the front runner in the race for the Republican US Presidential nomination has set alarm bells ringing in Israel, writes David Horovitz.
His isolationist policies are worrying enough for a country that receives an annual $31 billion in US aid, and enjoys a close military strategic alliance with Washington, but it is Mr Buchanan's perceived anti Semitism, and the fact that millions of American voters are apparently not appalled by it, that most disturbs Israelis.
Mr Buchanan's successes have been accompanied by daily revelations that apparently underline his anti Jewish bias. One Israeli television station revealed that the candidate's official "site" on the Internet features a quotation from Adolf Hitler.
Not to be outdone, the English language Daily Jerusalum Post discovered that the same Internet site also carries articles which allege that Ms Hillary Rodham Clinton is an agent of Israel's Mossad intelligence service and charge the Mossad with responsibility for the death of President Clinton's aide, Mr Vincent Foster.
Declining to speak to an Israeli television reporter, Mr Buchanan demanded instead that some American journalists come forward to ask him questions.
In an editorial yesterday, the Jerusalem Post described Mr Buchanan as a respectable American anti Semite" too sophisticated to deny the Holocaust outright, bent instead on "deriding its scope and meaning."