From Rob Eshman at the Jewish Journal, who says that Ted Kennedy voted AIPAC’s way 100 percent of the time.
The relationship was mutually beneficial—either a testament to Kennedy’s bedrock values or his astute political instincts. Take the Carter race.
In the 1980 presidential race, writes Jeffrey S. Helmreich, “polls indicated that Carter would beat Kennedy in the New York Democratic primary by a margin of 54 to 28 percent. But on March 1, Carter’s UN Ambassador, Donald F. McHenry, voted for a viciously anti-Israel resolution in the UN Security Council condemning Israeli settlement activity in Jerusalem. Three weeks later, Kennedy beat Carter in New York by 59 percent to 41 percent.”
In a statement following Kennedy’s death, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “(Senator) Kennedy has been a friend for 30 years, a great American patriot, a great champion of a better world, a great friend of Israel. He will be sorely missed.”
Note the awful values contained in Eshman’s piece. With that Helmreich link, he quotes without demurral a piece of propaganda from the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, less than 75 years after Theodor Herzl promised the Pope and the Sultan that Jerusalem and its Holy Places would be extraterritorialized. And Ted Kennedy signed off on the settlement/cleansing program.
Thereby personifying the iron law of PEP in American politics: Progressive Except on Palestine.
Wouldn’t we all be a lot better off if the Jewish community had supported Jimmy Carter in his effort to stop the colonies? Tragic. Thanks to Bob Feldman, whose take on EMK is here.
