Received this from Charlie Spies, Jewis Team Leaders, Republican National Committee. Again, mainly interested in candidates from the opoint of view of Israel.
"John Kerry`s Agenda
Posted 6/30/2004
By Editorial Board
In recent editorials we’ve noted that Senator Kerry has frequently chastised President Bush for not being more "engaged" in some sort of Middle East “peace process.” As we’ve said, given the Palestinians’consistent refusal to enter into serious discussions where they actually keep their word, we find this criticism to be a rather euphemistic way of saying that America should be pressuring Israel to make ever more concessions.
Indeed, Mr. Kerry told an audience at an ADL dinner that as
president he would strive to be an "honest broker" — presumably as distinguished from the approach taken by President Bush.
Given the widespread perception of Mr. Bush as being more pro-Israel than any of his predecessors, we felt this statement to be rather ominous — and curious as well, if only because of the venue in which it was made. It is in this context that we were struck by the sharp contrast in attitude manifested by Mr. Kerry toward two separate Senate votes last week.
Mr. Kerry scrapped a speech and fund-raiser in Albuquerque on Monday, June 21, and flew 3,910 miles overnight to Washington in order to cast a vote on an issue his advisers consider critical to his candidacy.
In essence, the vote was on whether to waive the Senate`s budget rules to permit consideration of a proposal to give every veteran access to prescription drugs and health services through the Department of Veterans Affairs. (Though all veterans are entitled to such benefits,they often are forced to wait long periods for the medications and also required to make certain co-payments depending on their incomes.)
As it turned out, the vote was delayed until late Tuesday and Kerry left Washington before it commenced. In any event, the measure fell 11 votes short of the 60 required to waive the rules and was never considered.
The very next day, Wednesday, June 23, the House of
Representatives, by a vote of 407-9, "strongly endorsed" the
groundbreaking commitments made by President Bush to Prime
Minister Sharon this past April — namely, that the United States believes it to be "unrealistic" to expect Israel to pull back to pre-1967 borders and to accept the notion of a Palestinian “right of return” to Israel.
The Senate adopted a similar resolution on Thursday a vote of 95-3. The three nay-sayers were Robert Byrd, James Jeffords and John Sununu. Two other senators did not vote at all: Richard Lugar and ...drum roll, please ... John Kerry. Mr. Kerry was back out on the campaign trail, basking in a photo-op with former Ford boss Lee Iacocca, who made a big thing of announcing his support for the
Massachusetts senator. Mr. Kerry also attended a Hollywood fund-raising concert.
And that seems to be that. But let the record show that in the middle of a presidential campaign, Mr. Kerry apparently felt no need even to issue a statement expressing regret over not being able to make the vote, or one voicing support for the pro-Israel resolution.
We’ve said in the past that Mr. Kerry is far from clueless on the Middle East. He knew exactly what he was saying when he used the "honest broker" phrase. And he certainly knows that President Bush`s positions on Israel constitute a sea change from the Clinton/ Albright policies. And there’s the rub. Mr. Kerry seems to want to go back to that failed approach. And it may, in fact, not be such a big deal to those in the Jewish community for whom Kerry`s Clinton-style "pro-Israel" stance resonates.
As we’ve said before, though, Mr. Kerry has a special
responsibility in this election. If the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world are given cause to believe that all bets would be off in the event of a new U.S. administration taking office in January 2005, the
consequences would be frightening — not only for Israel but for the war on terror in general.
If such a perception were to take hold, it would greatly increase the incentive of fanatics to try to facilitate electoral change Madrid- style. And should such an attempt in fact take place, a pervading sense of the triumph of terror would be upon us." |
