Israel Matzav

Mitt Romney's Hezbullah connections

Can you tell a man by the company he keeps? If so, Mitt Romney has a lot of explaining to do. This is from Debbie Schlussel's blog (Hat Tip: Storemanager via Little Green Footballs):

Does Romney have problems with the fact that Knollenberg and his state legislator son, Marty Knollenberg, both took thousands in campaign contributions from Hezbollah's American agents, Nijad Fares and Abdullah Bouhabib, as I've repeatedly noted? Apparently Not. Does Romney have a problem with the fact that, to pay these egregious contributors back, Joe Knollenberg single-handedly (with Sen. Spencer Abraham on the Senate side) doled out at least $86 million of our tax money to Hezbollah in 2000, allowing Hezbollah to rebuild its strongholds in Southern Lebanon and expand? Apparently not.

Is Romney bothered that Joe Knollenberg put "Seeds of Peace"--a summer camp founded by Yasser Arafat's fave biographer--on the federal budget? Or that the camp, until recently run by Clintonista Aaron David Miller, discussed Holocaust denial as a legitimate theory, as it made Jewish kids and kids of Palestinian terrorists discuss that? Why is our tax money going to this camp in Maine? Ask Mitt Romney's favorite new Michigan Congressman?

Or ask Joe Knollenberg why millions in our federal money went to the jihadist, anti-Israel National Arab American Museum? He single-handedly went to bat for federal pork for this warehouse of enemy propaganda on our soil. And ask Romney why he has allies like this in Michigan.

Quite clearly, Romeny doesn't understand jihad at all. He has its key allies in Congress as his allies. You know what they say about "the company you keep." This is the company Romney will keep in the White House. Count on it.

Then, there's the presence of Katie Packer as one of Romney's top campaign aides in Michigan. Ms. Packer worked for Hezbollah's U.S. Senator, Spencer Abraham, whose pan-jihadist activities I've noted extensively on this site. She was a senior aide to him and ran his losing 2000 re-election campaign.

I've known the Packer family for most of my life. They are one of the sleaziest, most phony bunch of people I've met. They claim they are evangelical conservatives who are pro-life and believe in small government. But they aren't.

Read the whole thing.

This is not the first time I have questioned the company that Romney keeps. At the time, I was inclined to cut him some slack:

Doesn't sound like someone who's pandering to the Arabs, does it? So why did Romney do it? Zev Chafets thinks the whole story is overblown:

The picture [of Romney at the Ford Museum. CiJ] was meant to convey a message of "innovation and transformation," the motto of the Romney campaign. The venue had a local message, too. Romney's father, George, a former Michigan governor [and candidate for President in 1968. CiJ], was the automotive executive who (temporarily) saved American Motors with the compact Rambler in the late 1950s.

Today, with Detroit hemorrhaging automotive jobs, Mitt would like to be remembered as his father's son and - because he probably couldn't carry Massachusetts in a presidential election - make Michigan his surrogate home state. And there's nothing that says Michigan more than the Ford Museum, a place every school kid south of Petoskey is dragged through at least once.

...

As for the Ford Museum, it is the most important historical institution in a city not overflowing with culture. It houses Thomas Edison's lab and the chair President Lincoln was sitting in when he was shot. The tone of the place is one of bland, politically correct American self-celebration. If the racial prejudices of its namesake put it beyond the pale, what are the Democrats going to do about the Jefferson Memorial?

If attempting to link Romney with anti-Semitism is a cheap political trick, it is also something worse. Jews have real enemies these days, some of whom insist that a Jewish conspiracy has hijacked U.S. foreign policy on behalf of Israel. This is genuine Ford-ism, and it is found primarily on the "progressive" end of the political spectrum - as the National Jewish Democratic Council knows very well. Crying wolf is always irresponsible, but doing it in the middle of a forest is truly dangerous.

If I had to make up my mind right now, I'd be voting for Rudy Giuliani. But I'm inclined to agree with Chafets. This story has been blown out of proportion.

And the reason I said he didn't sound like someone who was pandering to the Arabs was these remarks at the 2006 Herzliya Conference.

“No, what we should have realized since 9/11 is that what the world regarded as an Israeli-Arab conflict over borders represented something much larger. It was the oldest, most active front of the radical Islamist jihad against the entire West. It therefore was not really about borders. It was about the refusal of many parts of the Muslim world to accept Israel’s right to exist – within any borders.

“This distinction came into vivid focus this summer. The war in Lebanon had little to do with the Palestinians. And it had nothing to do with a two-state solution. It demonstrated that Israel is now facing a jihadist front that from Tehran through Damascus to Southern Lebanon and Gaza.

“As Tony Blair astutely put it, Hizbullah was not fighting ‘for the coming into being of a Palestinian state…but for the going out of being of an Israeli state.’

“Yet we have still not fully absorbed the magnitude of the change. As far as our enemies are concerned, there is just one conflict. And in this single conflict, the goal of destroying Israel is simply a way station toward the real goal of subjugating the entire West.”

Has Romney changed his tune?

Romney claims that the jihad is the number one foreign policy issue facing the United States. He criticized the Bush administration for the timing of the Annapolis gang rape. He refers to Hezbullah as a "bloodthirsty terror organization." On the other hand, he deludes himself that Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen is a 'moderate.' While he's not the most pro-Israel candidate in the race, he's also not Ron Paul. So why does he keep company like the Knollenbergs and the Packers? I don't know, but it's downright disturbing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:01 PM