Things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.
Liberal Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a presidential-maybe, is going to Israel. Matt Viser at the Boston Globe says she needs to pad our her skimpy foreign policy brief:
A Warren aide said the freshman senator is planning to join a congressional trip to Israel, but given her aggressive schedule campaigning on behalf of Senate Democrats it likely will come after the midterm elections in November.
That trip could raise speculation that Warren is trying to add to her foreign policy portfolio ahead of a potential presidential run, but it also could be seen as her playing catch up to other freshman senators who have already traveled abroad.
Here is a defining moment: Senator Warren running away, at Netroots on July 18, when a reporter asked her about the Gaza slaughter.
This goes in the same file as Hillary Clinton throwing Obama under the bus on his Israel policy and Andrew Cuomo standing there like a potted plant with Netanyahu yesterday and Rand Paul throwing his old self under the bus on his former criticisms of Israel. I believe that it’s about money, pure and simple, campaign contributions. The perspicacious Tom Friedman explains the Israel lobby’s efficacy:
if you and I were running from the same district, and I have AIPAC’s stamp of the approval and you don’t, I will maybe have to make three phone calls and I can raise my whole– I’m exaggerating but I don’t have to make many phone calls to get all the money I need to run against you. You will have to make 50,000 phone calls. So that pulled the whole spectrum to the right
P.S. Steve Israel just went to Israel, too. Since he got back, he’s been working the phones, trashing Hamas, and going round to the Jewish Federations, the pro-Israel group. Again, I believe this is about money. He’s the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He has to raise a lot of money in that job. And as Willie Sutton said…
http://polhudson.lohudblogs.com/2014/08/13/zephyr-teachout-declines-to-take-stand-on-israelhamas-conflict/
Here’s Zephyr Teachout doing a similar wimpout. Fred Dicker of the Post was giving her the opportunity to criticize Andrew Cuomo’s blatant pandering, and she refused to take the bait. (The right wing Dicker is probably pro-Likud, but also a good journalist with a taste for a good controversy).
I got zero response from her office in regards to anything on Israel but get weekly emails from her staff requesting aid,support or money.
Funny how that works.
Well, I suppose ‘No comment’ is better than ‘No daylight between me and Netanyahu’, though it’s still a bit depressing. A considerable section of public opinion in the United States seems, on the poll evidence, not to be lapping up the Israeli story uncritically but things will hardly progress until someone with some prominence and a voice that is listened to is prepared to give a lead. I suppose that they know that if they do this early their nascent careers will be snuffed out and that if they think of doing it later they find that they’re too committed to draw back without looking dishonest for what they said before.
Money is part of it, but equally important is the awareness that (especially for someone who isn’t Jewish) any sign of being less than full-out, no-questions-asked, pro-Israel will incur the eternal wrath of countless pundits, network executives, and other opinion shapers.
No one here seems to entertain the possibility that intelligent well-meaning people could look at all of the facts and arrive at a difference of opinion. Let us imagine for a moment that these politicians have examined the situation in the ME and agree with the Israeli position predominantly. Is that a possibility? Have you found in life that every time someone disagrees with you that they are mentally ill or controlled by outside nefarious sources? The latest polls show higher support for Israel in those Americans with more education and more life experience.