Israel Matzav

Sean Bielat, Republican candidate for Congress in MA-4

As many of you know already, I grew up in Massachusetts' 4th congressional district. I grew up in Newton and went to private school in Brookline. When I was growing up, our congressman was a Jesuit priest who had been dean of Boston College Law school when Dad went there. His name was Robert Drinan.

Around the time I left home for college in New York, Drinan retired from Congress and was replaced by Barney Frank. Frank has represented the district ever since. Now, another Jesuit is seeking to oust Frank. He's running on the Republican ticket and his name is Sean Bielat. I've talked about him briefly once before here.

I'm writing about Bielat again because I saw this post by Ace of Spades, which indicates that Bielat has a realistic chance of ousting Barney Frank. Imagine that. In the strange year of 2010, a Catholic Republican has a chance of ousting a liberal Jewish Democrat in one of the most Jewish and Democratic districts in the United States. I'm going to show you a video first about who Sean is, and then I've done a little investigating into his positions on Israel. I think you'll be pleased.

But first, let's go to the videotape.



So naturally my next question was, where does this guy stand on Israel. He has a position paper on it here. It certainly sounds like he gets it. Here's a key passage.

With the Palestinian leadership divided by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, however, there may not be an Arab partner truly interested in “two states living side by side in peace.” To date, direct and meaningful negotiations have failed to take place. And instead of responding to unilateral Israeli concessions with positive change, the opposite has occurred: Palestinians have consistently used land conceded by Israel to launch further attacks on Israelis.

We may soon have to accept the unpleasant realization that the Palestinian leadership does not really want to co-exist peacefully with Israel and that no amount of Israeli concessions will change this. Recent history has shown that Israeli concessions have led not to reciprocal gestures but to increased Palestinian demands and more violence. Perhaps the root cause of the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews is, in fact, not that the Palestinians don’t have a state but that the Jews do. In an effort to maintain favor among world liberal elite, the Obama administration has avoided this inconvenient truth and has wrong-headedly pressed Israel to weaken itself more and more in the vain hope that the Palestinians will change their ways.

Additionally, the Palestinians continue to honor terrorists and to teach their children that martyrdom in the cause of killing Jews is the single highest calling in life. Rather than coddling those who support terror and making excuses for their actions, it is high time that the United States holds the Palestinians to standards of civilized behavior that are appropriate to a people seeking to join the community of nations in their own state.

Read the whole thing, especially if you're going to be voting in that district. (I don't vote in Massachusetts; I vote in New Jersey, which was the last place I lived before I moved to Israel). How does Barney Frank compare with Bielat. Go here to find out.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:21 PM