Israel Matzav

Unbelievable: AIPAC apologizes to Obama for Trump speech

You all know I am not a big Donald Trump fan (to put it mildly - I'm backing Ted Cruz now and I believe that Trump's 'neutrality' on Israel is wrong-headed), but this is beyond absurd. The pro-Israel political group AIPAC tearfully apologized for Trump's speech on Monday to a man that they somehow consider 'pro-Israel' - Barack Hussein Obama. That's not just yuge, it's unprecedented.

The prime minister’s video-linked speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's conference was preceded by the unscheduled introduction of AIPAC President Lillian Pinkus and four other leaders. Choking back tears, Pinkus apologized for Monday night's speeches, implying that Donald Trump had violated a nonpartisan standard.

“From the moment this conference began, until this moment, we have preached a message of unity,” Pinkus said. “We have said, in every way we can think of: Come together. But last evening, something occurred which has the potential to drive us apart, to divide us. We say, unequivocally, that we do not countenance ad hominem attacks, and we take great offense to those that are levied against the president of the United States of America from our stage.”

Trump’s speech, which he largely recited from a teleprompter, was actually notable for its low level of invective. A candidate who has mocked Marco Rubio’s thirstiness, Rand Paul’s looks, Jeb Bush’s energy level and Carly Fiorina’s face confined his criticism of Obama to a few tossed-off insults.

“With President Obama in his final year — yay!” said Trump, adding an exclamation not in the text and earning huge applause. Later, diverting from his text again, he called the president “maybe the worst thing to happen to Israel.”

Calling Obama the worst thing to happen to Israel is at least accurate with the qualifier 'since Jimmy Carter' and it's probably entirely accurate. For AIPAC to deny that and pretend that Obama - who has frozen Netanyahu out of Washington on numerous occasions, including this week - is simply beyond absurd.

Yet while AIPAC invites candidates and leaders from both parties, and while it discourages protests from the audience, Trump was hardly the first speaker to criticize a sitting president. He was followed on the stage by Ted Cruz, who compared the administration’s deal with Iran to the 1938 Munich agreement that handed Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Four years earlier, AIPAC allowed Mitt Romney to address the conference by satellite, and he went on to accuse the president of “lecturing” Israel and “emboldening” the Palestinians.

And both Cruz and Romney are correct.

But no AIPAC speech had been criticized like Trump’s. Jane Eisner, the editor in chief of Jewish news source the Forward, wrote that she was “ashamed that any of my fellow Jews could applaud” Trump.

“I am ashamed that they would succumb to the pandering lies,” she wrote. “Donald Trump ought to have been received civilly but silently by AIPAC. Instead, the applause spoke volumes.”

Chemi Shalev, a correspondent for Israel’s Haaretz, left the Trump speech in shock and asked how fellow Jews could have applauded it.

Both the Forward and Haaretz are far Leftist rags. Shalev certainly does not represent mainstream Israelis and Eisner probably doesn't represent mainstream American Jewry.

Shame on AIPAC for refusing to acknowledge reality. 

Labels: AIPAC, Barack Hussein Obama, Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, US presidential campaign 2016

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:08 PM