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May 2016

POLITICS Comments turned off

When You Can’t Stand Your Candidate A story of 1972. By Elliot Abrams

By on May 9th, 2016

The party has nominated someone who cannot win and should not be president of the United States. We anticipate a landslide defeat, and then a struggle to take the party back from his team and his supporters and win the following presidential election. Meanwhile, we need to figure out how to conduct ourselves.

No, not Donald Trump and the Republican party today. George McGovern and the Democratic party in 1972. I was in those days a law student and active supporter of Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, whose staff I joined when I got out of school. Jackson, who served in Congress from 1941 until his death in 1983, ran for president twice—in 1972 and 1976—and led the foreign policy hardliners in his party.

Watching conservative Republicans writhe in anguish over Trump, it’s worth looking back at what Jackson and the foreign policy hawks who surrounded and supported him—and detested McGovern and McGovernism—did back then.

Jackson’s biographer, Robert Kaufman, describes the time well in Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics (2000):

Jackson regarded McGovern’s impending triumph [at the Dem­ocratic Convention in Miami Beach, in July 1972] as an unmitigated disaster for the party. .  .  . [H]‌e stoutly resisted the inevitability of the McGovern candidacy by all means at his disposal right up until the Democrats nominated McGovern in July.

Supporters of Jackson and Hum­phrey, southerners, and organized labor had banded together in an abortive effort called “Anybody But McGovern.” .  .  . Even when Muskie and Hum­phrey formally bowed out, Henry Jackson would not. He received 536 votes for the nomination on the convention floor. I. W. Abel, head of the United Steelworkers of America, nominated him. Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia seconded the nomination.

So here’s a first lesson: Do not allow the Republican convention to be a coronation wherein Trump and Trumpism are unchallenged. There’s no reason others who won many delegates, from Rubio to Cruz to Kasich, should not have their names put in nomination. The party needs to be reminded that there are deep divisions, and Trump needs to be reminded of how many in the party oppose and even fear his nomination.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

At 68 – is Israel isolated?Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on May 9th, 2016

Secretary of State John Kerry and other Western policy-makers – joined by the “elite” Western media – contend that 68 year-old Israel is increasingly isolated due to its defiance of global pressure to evacuate the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria, which tower over Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and 80% of Israel’s population, transportation, technological and business infrastructure.

Since 1948, global pressure on Israel to commit itself to dramatic concessions has been a fixture of Israel’s foreign policy and public diplomacy, accompanied by warnings that Israel was dooming itself to painful isolation. An examination of Israel’s global position – economically, militarily and diplomatically – documents that irrespective of Israel’s uphill diplomatic challenges, these warnings crashed on the rocks of reality, and resoundingly refuted by an unprecedented integration of Israel with the global street.

Thus, side-by-side with the rough diplomatic talk which has always pounded Israel, there has been an increasingly mutually-beneficial, geo-strategic walk. This is highlighted by Israel’s unprecedented civilian and military integration with the international community, in response to growing international demand for Israel’s military, economic, technological, scientific, medical, pharmaceutical and agricultural cutting-edge innovations.

Israel’s increasingly global integration is reflected by a series of developments in the last few weeks, which are consistent with Israel’s well-documented 68-year-old track record on the global scene.

For example, notwithstanding Europe’s support of the Palestinian Authority and harsh criticism of Israel, NATO does not subscribe to the “isolate Israel” theory, follows its own order of geo-strategic priorities, and therefore refuses to cut off its nose to spite its face. Hence, on May 3, 2016, NATO significantly upgraded its ties with Israel, inviting Jerusalem to establish a permanent mission at their Brussels headquarters. This upgrade will expand the surging, mutually-beneficial Israel-NATO cooperation in the areas of counter-terrorism, intelligence, battle tactics, non-conventional warfare, science, cyber and space technologies and defense industries, where Israel possesses a unique competitive edge.

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