re: #42 Bob Levin

timesunion.com

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: Romney’s wasted trip to Israel

One quick question and observation about Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel. Since the trip was not about learning anything but about how to satisfy the political whims of the right-wing, super pro-Bibi Netanyahu, American Jewish casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, why didn’t they just do it in Las Vegas?

If I wrote that (and I wrote something close to that pre-trip) what would you have accused me of?

The observation is this: Much of what is wrong with the U.S.-Israel relationship today can be found in that Romney trip. In recent years, the Republican Party has decided to make Israel a wedge issue. In order to garner more Jewish (and evangelical) votes and money, the GOP decided to “out-pro-Israel” the Democrats by being even more unquestioning of Israel.

Ouch!!!

This arms race has pulled the Democratic Party to the right on the Middle East and has basically forced the Obama team to shut down the peace process and drop any demands that Israel freeze settlements. Add on top of that the increasing role of money in U.S. politics and the fact that the main Israel lobby, AIPAC, has made itself the feared arbiter of which lawmakers are “pro” and which are “anti-Israel” and, therefore, who should get donations and who should not — and you have a situation in which there are almost no brakes, no red lights, around Israel coming from America anymore.

Double ouch!!!!

So how about all you U.S. politicians — Republicans and Democrats — stop feeding off this conflict for political gain. Stop making things even worse by telling the most hard-line Israelis everything that they want to hear, just to grovel for Jewish votes and money, while blatantly ignoring the other side.

Now go call Friedman an anti-semite.

PS: I am not a Democrat. They are as a party, to me, whores.