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Obama and the Jewish Left Politicizing Iran

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One of the main talking points of those criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s plan to speak to Congress on the question of Iran sanctions is that by opposing President Obama’s stand on the issue, he is turning support for Israel into a partisan question. This would be a grievous fault if he were guilty of doing that, but while Netanyahu’s decision to stick with his planned address is a mistake, those who are characterizing the debate on Iran as one in which the prime minister has undermined bipartisan support for measures that are important to Israel couldn’t be more wrong. And there is no better example of why this interpretation is wrong than the battle being waged to influence Senator Cory Booker. Though support for more pressure on Iran has always had broad bipartisan support, it is the Jewish left and their allies who are doing everything possible to frame the issue as one on which Democrats must blindly follow the lead of the head of their party, principle and the security of Israel be damned.

As NJ.com reports, Booker has always been considered a stalwart supporter of Israel but he is under intense pressure from Democratic partisans to bail on the bipartisan Iran sanctions bill being co-sponsored by Robert Menendez, the senior senator from his state and a fellow Democrat.

Booker received massive Jewish and pro-Israel support in his bid for the Senate but he is nowhere to be seen on the issue of Iran right now. Though the only real chance to get Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions is to place additional pressure on the Islamist regime by warning it that more sanctions will be imposed if they continue to stall the negotiations, Booker has been mute on the issue and refused to sign on as one of the numerous co-sponsors of the bill proposed by Republican Mark Kirk and Menendez.

What could be preventing him from taking a stand on which there is a broad pro-Israel consensus? The answer is obvious. It is pressure from the White House and partisan Democrats who are seeking to prey on the blind partisan loyalties of Democrats in an effort to derail the sanctions effort. The president sees the sanctions bill as a threat to his policy because it is precisely aimed at strengthening his hand in the talks with Iran. That’s because he sees the talks as not so much a tool in order to force Tehran to dismantle their nuclear program, as he promised in his 2012 foreign-policy debate with Mitt Romney, but a means by which to advance a new détente with the Islamist regime. And in order to keep this dubious goal on track, he is calling in all of his political markers with fellow Democrats. Since he and Booker have been political allies, he is seeking to use his leverage with the senator in order to get him to toe the White House’s agenda rather than the one followed by Menendez, Charles Schumer, and many other pro-Israel Democrats.

That this effort is being backed by the National Jewish Democratic Council is particularly troubling since it shows just how far partisan fronts will go in terms of discarding their pro-Israel principles in order to do the bidding of their party masters. This is also the case with the left-wing J Street lobby, whose behavior has often given the lie to its claim to be both “pro-Israel” as well as “pro-peace.”

J Street is leading the charge against Netanyahu with a web campaign against the prime minister and Iran sanctions that the Anti-Defamation League has denounced as “inflammatory and repugnant.” In it, J Street has denounced the prime minister claiming, “Netanyahu does not speak for me.” To claim, as they do, that the prime minister’s stand on Iran is “hardline” and therefore out of touch with American Jews is nothing short of astonishing since it assumes that there is some kind of debate about the virtues of détente with Iran within American Jewry or even Americans in general. The ADL has called on Netanyahu to postpone his speech, but even they realize that the tone of the J Street attack on the Israeli is redolent of the sort of dual-loyalty arguments used by anti-Zionists.

It must be understood that the reason why Obama and his Jewish apologists are focusing on Netanyahu’s speech is because they wish to obscure or to downplay the merits of the debate on Iran sanctions. The president and J Street have always taken it as an article of faith that pressure on Israel is a necessary component to the Middle East peace process. This is a fallacy, but they seem to think that support for pressure on Iran is somehow a function of “hardline” Israeli ideology or Republican politics. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as Menendez and other pro-Israel Democrats have continually pointed out. It is only by treating Netanyahu’s foolish but entirely appropriate efforts to influence the sanctions debate as something that is beyond the pale can they avoid having to defend treating Iran with kid gloves. That the NJDC would choose Obama over Israel is disappointing but perhaps understandable give that it is nothing but a partisan front. But for a group that claims to be pro-Israel to be conducting a campaign that can only be described as incitement against the democratically elected leader of the State of Israel illustrates just how disingenuous their “pro-Israel” tag has become.

It is worth noting that Booker co-sponsored a similar bill sponsored by Kirk and Menendez last year that former Majority Leader Harry Reid torpedoed at the behest of Obama. So Booker can’t be opposed to the bill on principle. The only reason for him or anyone else on both sides of the aisle to oppose more sanctions on Iran is pure political partisanship. And it is the Democrats and their spear-carriers like the NJDC and J Street that have divided the pro-Israel community on these narrow grounds purely to advance the agenda of President Obama. Say what you will about Netanyahu’s tactics, but there is no doubt that the people who are trying to turn Israel into a partisan issue are left-wing Democrats, not Netanyahu and the Republicans.

The post Obama and the Jewish Left Politicizing Iran appeared first on Commentary Magazine.


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