TW: A not infrequent occurence is American right-wing politicians advocating policies relative to Israel more radically conservative than most mainstream Israeli politicians themselves. Right-wingnuts like Sheldon Adelson (billionaire owner of Las Vegas Sands) is a primary funder of these efforts. Unfortunately from my perch, McCain adheres to many similiar views.
From Joe Klein at Time:
"[Max] Boot called the Bush administration’s renewed efforts to promote Israeli-Palestinian talks a mistake. He also cast Israel's talks with Syria as betraying the stake that the United States has invested in Lebanon's fragile democracy.
'John McCain is not going to betray the lawfully elected government of Lebanon,' Boot said.
McCain's radicalism on this issue has been a poorly kept secret--but his views clearly mirror the desires of extremists like McCain's Vegas fundraiser, Sheldon Adelson, who opposes a two-state solution...and he seems to have decided to align himself with the out-of-power Likud party on the Syrian negotiations...Israel is a democracy. We have no business strong-arming this ally. Israel's duly elected government--and, from my own conversations, it's military and foreign policy establishment--all see great potential advantages in talking to the Syrians.
The sheer arrogance of the McCain position is stunning; his inability to separate himself from the neoconservative extremists on any foreign policy issue raises major questions about his alleged foreign policy expertise. And, once again, it should be made clear this Likudnik-neoconservative tendency represents the thinking of a small minority of American Jews.
My position is, I believe, more commonly held than theirs: I'm in favor of the use of force, when called for--in the West Bank, after the terrorist attacks of 2002, for example--but I believe that Israel has no long term future unless diplomatic pathways to peace are found."
http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/09/mccain_and_israel.html
No comments:
Post a Comment