The New York Times ran a trolling article yesterday titled G.O.P. and Tea Party Gains Are Mixed Blessing for Israel:
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel came to the United States recently for another round of tense talks with the Obama administration, he got a decidedly warmer welcome from one of the rising Republican stars on Capitol Hill, Representative Eric Cantor, the incoming majority leader of the House.
But while Mr. Cantor and other newly empowered Republicans are eager to promote themselves as Israel’s staunchest defenders in Washington, the reconfigured American political landscape is a more complex and unpredictable backdrop for Middle East peacemaking.
Scores of Tea Party-backed candidates are entering Congress, many of whom favor isolationist policies and are determined to cut American foreign aid, regardless of its destination. Rand Paul, the newly elected Tea Party-backed senator from Kentucky, bluntly told the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, an influential pro-Israel lobbying group, that they were going to disagree about the need for foreign aid and suggested that they move on to other topics, according to a person briefed on the meeting.
This is much about nothing. The only candidate to whom The Times points is Rand Paul, but that is not what it seems. Rand Paul has distanced himself from traditional isolationist foreign policies of libertarians.
The details in the NY Times article actually contradict the headline and theme of the article, as incoming Tea Party backed candidates such as Allen West and Marco Rubio are portrayed as having made clear their support for Israel.
The “isolationist” policies which could threaten support of Israel come not from the Tea Party movement or the incoming Republican Congressmen, but from the left-wing of the Democratic Party and the foreign policy circles in the Obama administration.
And of course Jewish writers like Joe Klein and Glenn Greenwald who peddle the “Israel-firster” smear.
A lower-tier nutroot blog, The Booman Tribune, asks this question:
You might think that Israel’s interests would be best protected by the party that actually elects Jews to high office. But, for some bizarre reason, Israel actually finds the party-of-no-Jews to be friendlier. Why is that?
That is a good question, which remains unanswered.
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