As you surely know, California powerhouse Congressman Howard Berman, ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is duking it out with Congressman Brad Sherman to represent a combined new district. Both men are Jewish with good Israel lobby cred.
Enter rainmaker Mel Levine, the former California congressman. Levine is pushing Berman– and doing so by quoting top Israeli officials! So reports Russell Berman (you read that right) at the Hill.
Why is Levine doing this? I believe to appeal to Jewish voters in the district and to conservative fundraisers. It’s about Jewish nationalism as the core of Jewish identity.
(And remember that Mel Levine’s wife is Connie Bruck, who has covered the Israel lobby for the magazine. I guess she knows what she’s talking about!)
Also note that Brad Sherman tacks left on Libya, then right on Iran, in order to take Berman on.
In an interview, Sherman touted his foreign-policy record and criticized Berman for hewing too closely to the Obama administration and the State Department as chairman and now ranking member of the panel. “I certainly have some different views on foreign policy,” he said. “A lot of it is not just being a rubber stamp for the State Department.”
As a chief example, Sherman cites his opposition to the Obama administration’s military intervention in Libya last year, when he helped lead an effort in the House to strip funding for the mission under the War Powers Resolution.
Berman backed the intervention and the administration’s rationale for it.
Sherman and Berman are both strong supporters of Israel, but with regard to its tensions with Iran, Sherman says he pushed for stronger sanctions than did Berman. Privately, Sherman’s supporters go further and blame Berman for slow-walking a popular sanctions bill as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the bidding of the Obama administration.
“I’ve been in favor of tougher sanctions sooner, even if it ruffles feathers,” Sherman said.
…Berman was unavailable for an interview for this article, but a supporter, former Rep. Mel Levine (D-Calif.), called Sherman’s criticisms “absurd.”…
The former congressman, who served on the Foreign Affairs Committee with Berman for a decade until 1993, defended Berman’s record on Israel and Iran. He said he had been assured by “very senior Israeli officials” that “no one on the committee is more highly regarded than Congressman Berman.”
More on Mel Levine…
As a Congressman from Beverly Hills, Levine voted to support George H. W. Bush (that’s Bush senior, the smart one) in the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. Two years later, Levine tried to turn that vote to his advantage. Running in the 1993 Democratic primary for US Senate, Levine boasted of his pro-war credentials. I recall his television advertisements bragging that “he was the only candidate who voted for war against Saddam Hussein”. Levine was running against then-Congressman Barbara Boxer and a third candidate.
Levine had been a reliable liberal Democrat, and most Congressional Democrats voted against the war, so Levine’s transformation as a born-again hawk ruffled some feathers. An editorial in the LA Times called Levine “two-faced”. Boxer won, and Levine came in third (!!). That ended his political career.
I am sick and tired of people seeking public office in the US based on how far they have inserted their tongue up Israel’s ass! What is it going to take for these vipers to pander to us, the US citizenry, rather than to a foreign entity, for the privilege of spending our hard-earned dollars for same?
Have you guys seen a copy of the letter that airtilla activists got when they landed in Israel?
http://twitter.com/#!/ofirgendelman/status/191220063636955136/photo/1
This is a very thick plot indeed. Is Rep. Berman a non-Likudnik trying to pass for a Likudnik by having a surrogate quoting UNNAMED officials, who, for all we know, could be former officials from Kadima, or current from the insipid Atzmaut? Or is Rep, Berman a Likudnik trying to pass for a non-Likudnik by getting a surrogate whose wife made matzos with innocent Likudnik blood in it (New Yorker article was rather harsh)?
By the way, why Levine pretended to be a hawk when running against Boxer? A vain attempt to get some Zionist mogul investing money in his campaign? If so, how he became a rainmaker?
My conclusion is that these events take place so deep in the “tribal” territory that we do not have conceptual framework to understand them.
voters beware
now duking it out for congress
california’s 30th district
howard berman and brad sherman
both israel firsters & iran war enthusiasts
both defendents-to-be
in treason trials waiting to happen