SETH LIPSKY: DUBYA IS JEB’S BEST ADVISER ON ISRAEL…..SEE NOTE
http://nypost.com/2015/05/13/why-dubya-is-jeb-bushs-best-possible-adviser-on-israel/
The second Bush President known as “W” was indeed a warm, kind and sincere supporter of Israel as Lipsky reminds us of his speech. He was also a bumbler who invited the king of Saudi Arabia- locus of the funding and training of the 9/11 terrorists- to his ranch in Crawford, Texas where the robed thug had the effrontery only months after 9/11 to promote the Bush endorsde “peace plan”- the usual “give it all up” to Israel. Jeb keeps James Baker as adviser….he is weak on Common Core and national policy and security concerns…..My say is no more Clintons and no more Bushes…..rsk
The uproar over Jeb Bush’s attempt to find his footing on whether we should have fought the Iraq war fails to eclipse the good news — that his most influential adviser on Israel is his brother George.
“If you want to know who I listen to for advice, it’s him,” Jeb had said in remarks delivered here in New York and reported by The Washington Post. It was greeted with a raft of snide comments.
A writer for MSNBC promptly advised candidates to do the opposite of everything W. suggests. Politico rushed out a piece wondering how many times Jeb had been “dropped on his head as a child.”
The cynics may have missed George W.’s 2008 speech to Israel’s Knesset in honor of the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence.
It was an inspiring oration, making George W. — a Bible-believing Christian — the only president to call Israel “the redemption” of the “promise given to Abraham, Moses and David.”
Bush delivered his Knesset speech with only six months left in his presidency. What a contrast with the gutter language President Obama’s aides have used in speaking of Israel’s democratically elected leadership.
The president began by extending greetings in a Hebrew so inflected with his Texas drawl that it brought the legislators to their feet in raucous applause. He said he’d been told how rare it was in the Knesset for just one person — let alone a president — to be speaking at a time.
That was a hat tip to Israel’s fractious democracy. He also spoke of Ariel Sharon, who was clinging to life after his stroke and who had guided Bush on his first visit.
He spoke of David Ben-Gurion’s proclamation of the “natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate.”
Bush spoke of how Americans see the Jewish state — its pioneer spirit, agricultural miracle and high-tech revolution, its universities and cultural triumph. And the “determination of a free people who refuse to let any obstacle stand in the way of their destiny.”
This was the speech in which the president spoke of — and then uttered — the oath that Israeli soldiers swear: Masada shall never fall again. He also vowed that America’s alliance with Israel would be “unswayed by popularity polls or the shifting opinions of international elites.”
Bush spoke of the “shame” of a United Nations that “routinely passes more human-rights resolutions against the freest democracy in the Middle East than any other nation.”
He condemned “anti-Semitism in all forms — whether by those who openly question Israel’s right to exist, or by others who quietly excuse them.”
Then Bush spoke of “good and decent people” who “try to explain away” our enemies’ words. Some believe, he said, “that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”
“We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement.”
The Knesset erupted in applause. It was clear where Bush was going, and they’d rarely heard it put so plainly. “Some people suggest if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away.”
Bush called it “a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of the enemies of peace” and insisted, “America utterly rejects it.” He declared that in the war against terror, Israel’s population was “307 million,” because “America stands with you.”
The speech infuriated the left and America’s adversaries in the Middle East. Barack Obama’s campaign called it an “unprecedented political attack on foreign soil.” Egypt’s Al-Ahram complained the speech was “Torah-inspired.”
President Obama’s Cairo speech a year later can be seen as a bid to balance Bush’s Knesset address. Six years of American retreat have followed, and the Middle East is aflame. Even the Arab leaders are spurning Obama’s invitation to a summit.
So let the pundits try to trip him up on Iraq. If Jeb Bush is taking advice on Israel from his older brother, let’s hope he also takes his brother’s encouragement to get in the race.
It’s hard to think of a faster friend of Zion than the president who likes to be known as W.
Comments are closed.
