So, what do you do if you’re head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and a Democrat president “suggests” Israel should retreat to its pre-1967 borders, which the prime minster of Israel considers “indefensible?” If you’re Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, you demand Jewish Republicans “pledge to refrain” from making an issue of it during the 2012 election campaign.
Ms. Wasserman-Schultz pulled this little stunt during a meeting last week of representative delegates from the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The purpose of the meeting was ostensibly to shore up bipartisan support for Israel from American Jewish organizations. Yet Wasserman-Schultz decided to turn it into a “partisan bickering match” which, according to RJC executive director Matt Brooks, made Netanyahu uncomfortable enough to ask, “Do you guys want me to leave the room and give you guys some privacy?” “[The NJDC] decided to hijack these meeting in order to, in front of the prime minister, put a gag order in effect to prevent us from speaking out on Israel,” Brooks says.
The RJC was having none of it, as this letter to Wasserman-Schultz reveals.
One certainly can’t blame Wasserman-Schultz for trying. 78 percent of the Jewish vote went to Obama in the 2008 election, and the last thing this president needs going into next year’s campaign is Jewish-Americans having second thoughts about their votes — and perhaps more importantly, their substantial campaign contributions to the Democrat party. And if the black American community is any indication, Democrats have been enormously successful shutting down debate to the point where blacks themselves have effectively eliminated any free and open exchange of ideas within their own community. This now self-perpetuating totalitarianism is so prevalent, that prominent black conservatives, including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, have been routinely ostracized.
No doubt Wasserman-Schultz, who regularly demonizes the Republican party in general, would like to see the same thing happen within the Jewish community. To a large extent, it already has, if nearly eight-in-ten Jews could vote for a man who sat in the church of rabid anti-Semite Rev. Jeremiah Wright for twenty years, and who maintained a friendship with terrorist Bill Ayers, an integral player in the Free Gaza Movement involved with both the flotilla that tried to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza last year and the second one upcoming in June.
Yet one suspects this year is different, and Wasserman-Schultz knows it. Already some Democrats have expressed reservations about Obama’s “vision” regarding Israel’s borders, including see-no-evil stalwarts such as former NYC Mayor Ed Koch and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Koch claimed he wouldn’t vote for Obama unless his stance changes, and Reid told a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that ”no one should set premature parameters about borders, about building, or about anything else.”
Perhaps Debbie should consider shutting up some of her own before taking on Republicans.
Jews who actually care about Israel — as opposed to those who pay it lip service — have every right to be concerned with an American president whose “allegiance” to Israel is a cruel joke. This past weekend, Egypt officially opened its Rafah border crossing with Gaza. Democrats would like Jewish-Americans to ignore the fact that this development is one of the first tangible outcomes of the Obama administration’s decision to abandon Hosni Mubarak and, by extension, Israel’s treaty with Egypt. Perhaps abandoning Mubarak was unavoidable, but what “pressure” has the president since put on Egypt to maintain the treaty? He forgave a billion dollars worth of loans to Egypt — and wants to give them an additional billion dollars in aid.
Strings attached? None.
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