Debbie Wasserman Schultz 2
Haaretz has a piece by Chaim Levinson showing that Romney and Netanyahu share a number of donors. No surprises. But here is the most interesting nugget, involving the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz:
The Falic family of Florida owns the company Duty Free Americas, which is active in both North and South America. The family patriarch, Fima Chaim, died in January 2012, but is survived by his widow and three children. Altogether, the family is responsible for donating NIS 165,000 [$40,000] to Netanyahu, split among several members (since the legal ceiling on individual donations is NIS 43,280 ). Before his death, Fima gave $20,000 to the Republican Party and smaller sums to various Republican candidates.
Unusually, however, he also donated to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Jewish congresswoman from Florida who chairs the Democratic National Committee. His sons Leon and Jerome, and his son-in-law Simon gave $40,000, $41,500 and $55,000, respectively, to the Republican Party, as well as smaller sums to individual Republican candidates, including Romney. All three have also donated to Democratic candidates, however – especially Wasserman Schultz.
(Here is the FEC data on the Falic family showing the contributions to Wasserman Schultz. They maxed out for her, at $2300 each.)
These donations help explain why Wasserman Schultz said, astonishingly, during the recent Democratic Convention that there must be no daylight between the Republican and Democratic Parties on support for Israel–
“We need to make sure that the fact that there has never been and will never be daylight between the two parties, or the support for Israel that we have in the United States– that that is conveyed to Jewish Americans across the country.”
It’s an astonishing statement because politicians are supposed to drive wedges between their party and the other one where differences exist in public opinion. But it’s obviously Not in Wasserman Schultz’s interest to do so here because the party needs to raise money, and she knows that for Israelcentric donors like the Falics, they don’t care which party gets in so long as that party is for rightwing Israel. And there are enough of those Israelcentric donors that if the Dems and Republicans openly debated issues that Americans might just differ on–say, going to war with Iran, or colonizing the West Bank– the Dems would have to move left– against war and against colonies– and lose some of those donors. This is the same reason the National Jewish Democratic Council is positioning Obama to the right of Romney on Israel!
Such contributions also explain the most devastating reporting nugget in Peter Beinart’s book, The Crisis of Zionism. When Netanyahu spoke to the Congress in 2011 and said that Jerusalem is not a settlement, and defied US policy in other ways too, the Congress gave him 29 standing ovations and, according to Beinart, Wasserman Schultz led the cheers. She stood up and clapped her hands over her head to indicate when others were supposed to stand too.
Some day the issue will be politicized. Some day Wasserman Schultz will have to abandon her rightwing pro-Israel friends or lose her job. Right now, no problem!
She’s an embarrassment to the Democratic Party, along with Max Baucus and other shills for big money interests.
I would like to believe it, but I doubt that the issue will ever be politicized, or that US support for Israel will ever change. Netanyahu’s blatant interference in presidential politics is outrageous, but it strikes me as much a sign of strength as weakness. Liberal columnists are critical, and people like Barney Frank and Henry Waxman, two of Israel’s biggest gophers in Congress, are “shocked, shocked” to find such goings-on. But Netanyahu has gotten all he has asked for from the US on Iran, more than Obama was inclined to give, short of overt war. Despite Bibi’s arrogance, there are no signs of comeuppance, au contraire, Congress upgrades US-Israel security and covert war on Iran to ever-higher levels.
Meanwhile, switches have been set and trains are running, notably the Saudi/Gulf/Sunni attack on the Shia axis of Iran/Syria/Hizbollah. This is due in the first instance to the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the ascendancy of the Shia in Iraq. This in turn is due largely to Israel and its grip on the US. The neocons’ partners in crime, the gentile radicals like Cheney and Rumsfeld, would not have conceived, let alone pulled off, the 2003 invasion, alone.
Etc etc back to the 1940s… Israel has been instrumental in the neo-crusader assault on the region by the US, and in medievalizing regional politics, like the Shia/Sunni antagonism. The perception of and opposition to this in the US is utterly marginal, and the present embarrassment over Netanyahu’s antics is just a phase of indigestion which will pass. In my jaded view.
One shouldn’t assume that Debbie Wasserman Schultz enthusiastically supports the most right-wing and anti-liberal regime in Israeli history only because of Jewish campaign contributions — she is probably a passionate true believer and dedicated cultist when it comes to Zionism. She has drunk the Kool-Aid. She, like many other “liberal Zionists” in the Democratic Party (Chuck Schumer, Howard Berman, Brad Sherman, Ann Lewis, etc.), has been programmed and conditioned to pledge absolute loyalty to the Israeli government from birth. Her primary mission in life is to turn the United States into a tool of Israel and her narrow ethnic nationalist self-interest.
How many members of other ethnic groups in the Democratic Party behave this way? None that I can think of offhand. The NJDC (National Jewish Democratic Council) and the RJC (Republican Jewish Coalition) are two arms of the same Israel lobby and instruments of the Israeli government. They are working against the best interests of Americans.
Is Boca Raton in DNS’s Congressional district?
Debbie Wasserman Schultz in context:
Israel lobby > Democrats > Aaron David Miller
Israel lobby > Democrats > Abraham Foxman
Israel lobby > Democrats > Al Franken
Israel lobby > Democrats > Alan Dershowitz
Israel lobby > Democrats > Alan Grayson
Israel lobby > Democrats > Alan Solomont
Israel lobby > Democrats > Alan Solow
Israel lobby > Democrats > Ann Lewis
Israel lobby > Democrats > Anthony Weiner
Israel lobby > Democrats > Barney Frank
Israel lobby > Democrats > Bernard Nussbaum
Israel lobby > Democrats > Bernard Schwartz
Israel lobby > Democrats > Bob Shrum
Israel lobby > Democrats > Brad Sherman
Israel lobby > Democrats > Carl Levin
Israel lobby > Democrats > Chuck Schumer
Israel lobby > Democrats > Dan Shapiro
Israel lobby > Democrats > David Axelrod
Israel lobby > Democrats > Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Israel lobby > Democrats > Dennis Ross
Israel lobby > Democrats > Dianne Feinstein
Israel lobby > Democrats > Ed Koch
Israel lobby > Democrats > Ed Rendell
Israel lobby > Democrats > Eliot Engel
Israel lobby > Democrats > Eliot Spitzer
Israel lobby > Democrats > Evan Bayh
Israel lobby > Democrats > Gary Ackerman
Israel lobby > Democrats > Haim Saban
Israel lobby > Democrats > Harry Reid
Israel lobby > Democrats > Henry Waxman
Israel lobby > Democrats > Howard Berman
Israel lobby > Democrats > Howard Wolfson
Israel lobby > Democrats > Ira Forman
Israel lobby > Democrats > Jamie Rubin
Israel lobby > Democrats > Jane Harman
Israel lobby > Democrats > Jeffrey Goldberg
Israel lobby > Democrats > Joe Lieberman
Israel lobby > Democrats > Josh Block
Israel lobby > Democrats > Ken Pollack
Israel lobby > Democrats > Lanny Davis
Israel lobby > Democrats > Larry Summers
Israel lobby > Democrats > Lee Rosenberg
Israel lobby > Democrats > Leon Fuerth
Israel lobby > Democrats > Leon Wieseltier
Israel lobby > Democrats > Leslie Gelb
Israel lobby > Democrats > Lester Crown
Israel lobby > Democrats > Madeleine Albright
Israel lobby > Democrats > Marc Rich
Israel lobby > Democrats > Mark Penn
Israel lobby > Democrats > Mark Warner
Israel lobby > Democrats > Marshall Wittmann
Israel lobby > Democrats > Martin Indyk
Israel lobby > Democrats > Martin Peretz
Israel lobby > Democrats > Michael Milken
Israel lobby > Democrats > Michael Steinhardt
Israel lobby > Democrats > Nancy Pelosi
Israel lobby > Democrats > Nita Lowey
Israel lobby > Democrats > Penny Pritzker
Israel lobby > Democrats > Rahm Emanuel
Israel lobby > Democrats > Richard Cohen
Israel lobby > Democrats > Richard Haass
Israel lobby > Democrats > Robert Satloff
Israel lobby > Democrats > Robert Wexler
Israel lobby > Democrats > Ronald Lauder
Israel lobby > Democrats > S. Daniel Abraham
Israel lobby > Democrats > Sandy Berger
Israel lobby > Democrats > Shelley Berkley
Israel lobby > Democrats > Steny Hoyer
Israel lobby > Democrats > Steve Grossman
Israel lobby > Democrats > Steven Rattner
Israel lobby > Democrats > Steven Spielberg
Israel lobby > Democrats > Stuart Levey
Israel lobby > Democrats > Susan Estrich
Israel lobby > Democrats > Thomas Friedman
Israel lobby > Democrats > Will Marshall
(Additions and corrections welcome. We really do need an objective and detailed Wikipedia on the Israel lobby — it is an immense and important subject in contemporary American and global politics.)