Huh. Steny Hoyer is in Israel, with 25 other Democratic congresspeople. Jerusalem Post:
The current economic crisis in the US will have no impact on US financial assistance to Israel, US Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) said Wednesday.
Hoyer said he wanted to “make it clear” that the financial challenges confronting the US will not “have any adverse effect on America’s determination to meet its promise to Israel in the form of aid for its qualitative [military] superiority, or for its economic security.”
Hoyer said he did not believe America’s financial challenges would have “any adverse effect on the economic relationship, or assistance, that we give to Israel.”
Hoyer is leading a delegation on a tour paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation, a charitable spinoff of AIPAC. Writes Steve Walt, in “The Greatest Elected Body that Money Can Buy”:
I suppose I ought to be grateful that AIPAC and its sister organizations continue to work overtime to prove me and my co-author right. But there are bigger issues at stake here, which is why I hope that every one of those eighty-plus Congressmen faces a lot of nasty questions from their constituents upon their return.
As they say in Israel/Palestine, imshallah.
By the way, Hoyer also retrenched on Obama’s line– the 1967 borders– in conversation with Bibi Netanyahu. A congressional leader, abandoning the president for a foreign prime minister:
Hoyer said that Netanyahu brought up in their discussion President Barack Obama’s call for a return to negotiations to be based on the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed swaps, and said that Netanyahu believed that consistent with discussions he had with the president on this matter, that “they were in agreement, essentially.”..
[Hoyer went on,] “I think it’s clear that the president did not mean the 1967 borders [will be the final borders], he made it clear that this was subject to additional modifications, and I think the prime minister believed that to be the case as well.”
