What Does It Mean To Be the Pro-Israel Candidate?

from The American Prospect

The major candidates in both parties seek the "pro-Israel" label. Now is the time to debate what it means to support Israel, so that a year from now, elected leaders will be able to refer to publicly recognized ideas to justify acting more sensibly.

Gershom Gorenberg

For the record, Rudy Giuliani gives me the very deep creeps, relieved only by his current poor electoral prospects. I mention this because some people think he is the most pro-Israel of candidates. If so, may God protect Israel from its friends.

Giuliani, with Norman (World War IV) Podhoretz and Daniel Pipes among his foreign policy advisers, is only important as the most extreme example. Every presidential candidate who might get more than 3 percent of the vote in a primary anywhere seeks the "pro-Israel label," peculiarly defined by policies incongruent with Israeli political realities. Barack Obama gave a speech to AIPAC last year implying that he supported the way Israel prosecuted its 2006 war in Lebanon. (An Israeli inquiry report on decision-making in that war, due out soon, could end Prime Minister Olmert's career.) As I've noted previously, Hillary Clinton supports "an undivided Jerusalem" as Israel's capital. (Olmert insists on negotiating Jerusalem's future, even though it just cost him a right-wing coalition partner.)

(Continued here.)