Ayotte, Rubio and de Blasio are bought and paid for by the ‘magnificent’ Israel lobby

Did you ever wonder why the U.S. gives so much military aid to Israel and vetoes any resolutions critical of Israel at the U.N.? According to Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel and now a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, it’s thanks to the Israel lobby.

Freilich writes in the Jerusalem Post that the American Jewish community needs to close rank behind AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) after the Iran bruising. Emphasis mine:

AIPAC is not just a lobby, an instrument to be used regardless of the consequences. It is a magnificent creation of the American Jewish community and other supporters of Israel, and has become a vital component of the US-Israel relationship in its own right….

In Washington… there has always been one voice on Israel. This unity of effort, combined with AIPAC’S extraordinary effectiveness as an organization, explain why Israel has been the beneficiary of more US aid than any other country since WWII, a whopping $120 billion, and of no less vital diplomatic support.

Critics would say Freilich is monocausal. But then, progressive mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, who once told AIPAC, “Part of my job description is to be a defender of Israel,” and whenever you call on me, I’ll stand with you, is going to Israel next week on an Israel supporter’s dime. NYT:

The mayor is expected to depart next Thursday for Jerusalem, where he will speak about combating anti-Semitism to a gathering of mayors sponsored by the American Jewish Congress and other Jewish groups….

Airfare, lodging and expenses for Mr. de Blasio and his aides will be paid by an Israeli investor and entrepreneur, Baruch Eliezer Gross, who was introduced to Mr. de Blasio through mutual friends, according to the mayor’s aides.

Here is de Blasio’s patron Eliezer Gross’s business mission statement. It’s all about orthodox religious values; he has offices in Israel and New York.

The mayor’s spokesperson who tells the New York Times that there’s no conflict of interest in that patronage is Amy Spitalnick. She used to work for the liberal Zionist group J Street.

Let’s go to Washington. Peter Beinart in Haaretz says that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was appointed to the chair of the Democratic National Committee so as to woo Jews; but she sells out the White House when she likes. And she’s trying to out-Israel Florida Senator and Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio:

despite having been chosen as DNC head in part to help Obama woo Jews, Wasserman Schultz almost never forcefully defends his Middle East policies. To the contrary, she generally minimizes her party’s differences with the GOP on Middle East policy while slamming Republicans on domestic issues. And she looks for opportunities to cry anti-Semitism. Politico even reported that when Obama aides considered dumping her as party chair in 2013, Wasserman Schultz threatened to call the White House anti-Semitic.

Rubio is an articulate spokesperson for the view that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deserves complete freedom of action, backed by American weaponry, money and diplomatic cover, and that the Palestinians don’t deserve basic rights. Democrats deserve spokespeople able, and willing, to explain why he’s wrong.

Beinart merely touches on the fact that Rubio is backed to the hilt by Norman Braman, who says that the U.S. must be a superpower so as to defend Israel, and whose views of Israel were formed by the Holocaust. Israel gave the world a new paradigm of Jewishness, not Jews going meekly to their deaths, he said. Braman has spent hundreds of thousands in support of illegal Israeli settlements.

More corruption. Eli Clifton reports that Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, now up for reelection, has taken over the historic role of Senator Henry Jackson of Washington State, a bigtime Israel supporter funded by Israel supporters:

Since Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) retired from the Senate in in 2013, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) has risen to prominence as the newest member of the so-called “three amigos.” Alongside Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ayotte is one of the most hawkish and outspoken voices in the Senate…

New York-based hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer appears to be taking the lead in bankrolling Ayotte’s reelection efforts.

Clifton brings up the national interest piece, in a sly way. He doesn’t understand that part of Ayotte’s job description is to be a defender of Israel!

So, what does this [national security ad for Ayotte] have to do with the interests of her constituents in New Hampshire, a state with a strategically defendable 18-mile coastline (the shortest coastline of any U.S. coastal state) and a relatively peaceful 58-mile border with Canada?

It certainly fits with the policy priorities of the ad’s apparent funder. Singer funds some of Washington’s biggest critics of the Iran nuclear agreement, including organizations such as the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, AIPAC, and The Israel Project.

Singer, who serves on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition alongside fellow billionaire Sheldon Adelson, also helped bankroll the campaigns of Ayotte’s fellow senators Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) who famously promised that military strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities would only require “several days” of bombing.

Bear in mind that the Emergency Committee for Israel helped gin up Cotton’s victory in Arkansas with $1 million a year ago. And Cotton then wrote the letter to the ayatollahs co-signed by 46 senators selling out the president.

Bear in mind that Lindsey Graham, a Republican presidential candidate, said if he wins he’ll have an all-Jewish cabinet.

“If I put together a finance team that will make me financially competitive enough to stay in this thing…I may have the first all-Jewish cabinet in America because of the pro-Israel funding. [Chuckles.] Bottom line is, I’ve got a lot of support from the pro-Israel funding.”

Bear in mind that when President Obama reflected two years ago on his political rise from obscurity in Chicago, he credited a “cabal” of three wealthy women. All three are on the board of J Street, the liberal Zionist group Mayor de Blasio’s spokesperson once worked for:

I don’t know if Bettylu [Saltzman] actually told me that she thought I could be President.  (Laughter.)  But what I do know is this — that when I had just gotten out of law school and was still finding my way, and I had come back here and I was assigned to work to register voters with Project Vote, Bettylu even then was at the forefront of a nonpartisan effort to get people registered and voting, back in 1992.  And right away Bettylu treated me like a son, and with the warmth and concern, and she was somebody who introduced me to so many of the people in this room, and introduced me to so many people here in Chicago. And so when I look around the room and I see folks like Joan Harris and Judy Gaynor and people who have been supporters of mine from the get-go, I can all trace that back to Bettylu.   We’ve got kind of a Obama cabal here in this room.

Am I connecting too many dots? If other journalists were covering this seriously, you could form a better judgment on that score. But they’re not. And I can only write this post because I’m Jewish. Imagine a goy trying to write this up. People would say it’s an anti-semitic conspiracy theory. When Chuck Hagel ventured that it was the “Jewish lobby,” he got his head handed to him. But Freilich says that the Jewish community created the lobby, just as Alan Dershowitz did:

My generation of Jews…  became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy.

Now imagine if the Christian right were doing this kind of stuff? The media would be all over it. It won’t touch this stuff because it’s a pattern of Jewish influence, albeit rightwing Zionist Jewish influence, but Jewish influence all the same; and the idea that Jews are agents of history rather than its victims is a verboten one in the US mainstream.