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.”
