Romney: America Is No Kibbutz

His ties to Israel only extend so far.

Image by JESSICA RINALDI / Reuters

Mitt Romney bills himself as an ardent friend of Israel running against President Barack Obama who hasn’t visited the American ally since taking the oath of office, but Romney’s friendship only extends so far.

At a fundraiser today in Chicago — barely a week after visiting the Holy Land — Romney took a shot at the Israeli Kibbutz movement, a product of the early socialist zionist movement and integral to the story of the founding of the State of Israel.

“It’s individuals and their entrepreneurship which have driven America,” Romney said. “What America is not a collective where we all work in a Kibbutz or we all in some little entity, instead it’s individuals pursuing their dreams and building successful enterprises which employ others and they become inspired as they see what has happened in the place they work and go off and start their own enterprises.”