The crucial elements in this report on division in a Miami-area synagogue between Republicans and Democrats over support for Israel are: the angry Romney supporter’s age — 85– and influence — he is able to cancel the Debbie Wasserman Schultz appearance — and his sometime liberalism– he is a giant supporter of lower tuition rates and formerly advised Bill Clinton. Wasserman Schultz is the chair of the Democratic National Committee. The article is about Temple Israel:
Stanley Tate, a well-known philanthropist and prominent Republican who started Florida’s pre-paid college tuition program, resigned from the temple after he learned Wasserman Schultz would be talking about Israel following services on Friday night, and that he wouldn’t get an opportunity for rebuttal.
The temple’s president, Ben Kuehne, a Miami attorney, said the event was canceled because of security concerns.
Tate’s resignation came after he asked the temple’s leadership to let him speak in response to Wasserman Schultz. When they wouldn’t do so, Tate said he would leave the congregation. Tate, 85, is co-chair of Mitt Romney’s campaign in Miami-Dade County. He also has a national role in the GOP presidential candidate’s campaign.
“She’s the chairperson of the Democratic National Committee,” he said. “The topic is the U.S.-Israel relationship. There cannot be any conversation on that topic, none, unless it has to do with the politics.”
The dispute comes in an election year when Republicans are trying to win over traditionally Democratic-leaning Jewish voters from Obama. Some Jewish voters are concerned about the president’s stance against Israel’s building of settlements in the predominantly Palestinian West Bank.
Zio Gestapo at work.
hilarious – because the Dem flack was going to tout how Obama jumps on command when the zio-lobby barks and the Republican money-man was going to complain that he jumps a millisecond too slow and a millimeter too low
Will the Romney campaign now also accuse Debbie Wasserman Schultz of “throwing Israel under the bus” as the candidate did of Obama? What a joke! In Peter Beinart’s book The Crisis of Zionism, DWS is accused of literally orchestrating applause for Netanyahu during his extremist, rejectionist speech to Congress. DWS has also been deployed by the Obama Campaign to counter these types of ridiculous Republican charges. This is all part of a faux electoral debate about which of the two major parties loves Israel the most. The answer is that they both do. I wrote about this is some detail at Electronic Intifada: http://electronicintifada.net/content/phony-war-over-which-us-party-loves-israel-most/10794
What happens where US trend to ignore bipartisan hits on US domestic general welfare safety net in favor of free market theology affording welfare to big corporations and banks, meets what’s left of Obama’s care dream based on Swedish Model? Something to think about when you consider that Sweden is ditching its own welfare model, as are other Western states, e.g., France, the more they’ve become unaffordable when extended to ever-growing foreign intake. http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/25/living-in-sweden-thinking-of-the-holocaust/
And toss in the grinder the neocon push toward war on Iran, and the fact the Israel Lobby is supreme on foreign policy in America, Canada, UK, Australia…
PS: How about that $4B given to Israel as our US congress civil war is in high progress over what more can be cut from US general welfare net?
Nobody big in US politics is talking cutting “Defense” or foreign aid to Israel; quite the contrary, the push is to scare the masses into more spending on both.
“What the US public was willing to do for the Holocaust Jews they did out of human decency and sympathy, they had no national obligation to do it.”
Let’s add, and repeat time after time, that while the US Government and a large segment of the population were favorable to giving asylum to the persecuted from Germany and occupied countries, the Zionists, with all their organizations headed by Rabbi Wise, opposed tooth and nail the opening of borders to Jews fleeing Nazism. They mounted a huge and somewhat successful campaign and managed to stifle it.
They are directly responsible for untold misery and thousands of deaths.