Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Barak orders strike on Gaza during ‘Charlie Rose’– and checks what looks like a Rolex

Nov 18, 2011

Scott Roth and Phil Weiss

Ehud Barak on Charlie Rose Tuesday night

Check out the video of Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Charlie Rose Tuesday night. At 20:00 or so, he says that he has ordered a missile attack on Gaza because of an attack on Israel:

“Today a few hours ago, there was some Hamas… probably a crazy guy, he’s a Hamas guy… he shot at Israel [perhaps this attack] and we now, probably when we are talking, I ordered some attacks on some installations of Hamas.”

As he mentions his orders, Barak checks his watch. It looks like a steel and gold Rolex. Countless human rights reports have suggested that Barak is a war criminal for leading the attack on Gaza in 2008-2009. Isn’t this an unseemly performance for American television?

And considering how many times in the past the IDF’s operations against terrorist infrastructure have resulted in civilian casualties (like the injuries to the French consul and his family in Gaza last Sunday), maybe Barak should have postponed his appearance on Rose to monitor those attacks. Or not. Perhaps his nonchalance about mentioning them extends to his feelings about their consequences.

Egypt, Syria, and the dynamics of counter-revolution

Nov 18, 2011

Max Ajl

As elections near in Egypt, the American-Gulf-Israeli counter-revolution gathers strength across the Mediterranean and the Middle East: overwhelming Libya, threatening to beat back the Bahraini upsurge, and vying for power in Egypt, as right wing parties prepare to take power in the face of the irrepressible and amazingly effervescent spirit of struggle that keeps erupting between the cracks in the Egyptian “transition” – a transition increasingly lubricated with the blood of the Egyptian people.

There has been a lot of it over the last month. On 9 October 2011 the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) murdered 28 civilians, killing Copts and Muslims alike in a state-orchestrated massacre intended to “manufacture a discourse of conspiracy and sectarianism,” and split the Egyptian working-class along religious lines. The SCAF is learning well from its backers, the American and Israeli governments that are attempting to shatter the region into a jagged mosaic of statelets over which Israel and the Saudi-centered Gulf Cooperation Council can rule unhindered, the Eastern and Western islands of “stability” in a chaos they themselves brought into being.

The separation of Sudan into two states is only the most recent example, as are the ongoing attempts to split up Syria along tribal lines-of-division amidst the killing of members of groups linked to the regime such as the ‘Alawites. In Egypt, the state can pose as both the guarantor of stability as well as the provocateur of instability: what Charles Tilly characterized as a protection racket.

On the same day as the killings, 30 people were arrested, less than one percent of the 10,000 to 12,000 Egyptians, among them activist Alaa Abd El Fattah, imprisoned by the state security apparatus in the unsettled aftermath of the January 25 insurrection. Novelist Ahdaf Soueif comments, “in attacking this central, charismatic figure they appear to be openly mounting an attack on the very spirit of the revolution…The implications of the jail extension – for human rights and the safety of Egypt’s young people – are enormous.” Today a Coptic march commemorating the dead from the Maspero massacre was attacked by assailants of “unclear” provenance – the current euphemism for SCAF mercenaries.

Much is still unsettled, with the government still trying to quell the burbles of rebellion upsetting the “smooth transition” the SCAF and its American armorers have envisioned. At the core is the formal appearance, but not the reality, of political democracy – with democracy effectively hamstrung, the state can return to its normal business of preventing or repressing industrial and economic unrest so as to keep Egypt a secure territorial container in which capital can keep piling up.

As elections near – elections which the SCAF will certainly try to postpone if a unwelcome outcome seems imminent – electoral coalitions such as the Egyptian Bloc, funded by leading businessmen, are jostling with al-Wafd, the party of Egyptian social elites, dismantled in 1952 after the revolution, and the Muslim Brothers, well-embedded through social service networks across the country but chiefly accountable to its well-heeled leadership, and eager to serve the United States and the Gulf powers that tower over the region’s future. As Nate Wright writes in MERIP,“It was an odd partnership between the country’s most established Islamist and liberal parties. A few prominent members of al-Wafd protested the party’s cooperation with the Brothers by supporting the Egyptian Bloc. Both parties were reluctant to support demonstrations that called on the military to scrap emergency laws giving it wide-ranging powers,” highlighting their stance towards social change.

The alliance broke but the social forces that pushed it remain, with former members of the regime pushing for positions in parliament and preparing to reconstitute the ancien regime. A fresh rulingallows National Democratic Party members to take part in the upcoming election, clarifying the obduracy and staying power of Egypt’s traditional elites.

The SCAF promised to put forth a document laying out constitutional principles before the upcoming elections. It did. The document prevents any parliamentary oversight of the military budget, the core of the military’s power. It is estimated that the military controls between 10 and 30 percent of the economy, but no one knows and the SCAF is eager to shroud the truth. The document also reserves a strong role in selecting those who would draft the constitution. The emergency laws remain in place, and under those laws 10 to 12,000 Egyptian activists languish in prison after, or awaiting, trial-by-kangaroo-court. It is against those government proposals that Egyptians will protest this Friday in Tahrir Square.

Again this uneasy tableau, with the insurrection wobbling to and fro, liberals like Juan Cole are trying to retail a sanitized and simplified version of what has happened in Egypt over the last 10 months. The first move is dissolving the complexities of the Egyptian decade of mobilization – first radical youth and leftists protesting in solidarity with the Palestinian intifada, then against the Iraq War, then an unparalleled wave of labor unrest over the last decade, leading up to a failed try at a general strike on April 6 2008 at Mahalla al-Kubra after which the April 6 Movement, which took a leading role in coordinating the January 25 revolt, was named. What does not make it into Cole’s odd analysis is the ongoing repression in Egypt, the state’s attempts to beat back the surge of labor unrest, and especially the fact that the oil pipeline which exports Egyptian gas to Israel at subsidized rates has now been exploded seven times.

The dynamics are regional, the part of the picture Cole takes such care to blot out. It is a pacified and castrated Egypt which protects Israel and preserves a bisected Arab world, with the population centers separated where possible from the oil reserves; where that has proven impossible, pounded into rubble and turned over to outside stewardship – Iraq and Libya. Meanwhile the Gulf States are keeping an attentive eye on the Egyptian uprising. They’re watching out for their investments. Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Foreign Direct Investment in Egypt represented 25 percent of the country’s FDI in 2007, a number that has probably ticked up since then, while GCC firms are major shareholders or directly control 9 out of the top 12 major Egyptian banks.

Aware that a successful revolution in Egypt would not be containable, the laboriously slow, violent, and repressive Egyptian transition is meant to destroy any such possibility, pathologically uncaring of the human debris lying in these efforts’ wake. Meanwhile Washington has to perform a democratic jig, with Hillary Clinton wagging her finger at her SCAF counterparts about the pace of the transition. As the NYT comments,

The shift in tone is part of a difficult balancing act for Washington, which is keen to preserve its ties to the military and its interests in the region, chiefly Egypt’s role in maintaining peace with Israel. But Washington also hopes to win favor with Egypt’s newly empowered political opposition while avoiding the appearance of endorsing the military’s stalled transition to democracy. All things considered, some here have suggested, the change in tone may be intended to placate Egyptian public opinion rather than actually press the military to give up power.

Elsewhere, the counter-revolution has taken on an even more reactionary tinge, as Jordan’s King Abdullah on Monday urged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – certainly more popular than Abdullah, since hundreds of thousands recently came out to pro-regime protests – to step down from the presidency, even though there have been no defections from the regime.

As Abdullah, who, in response to popular unrest tends to simper for more loot for internal repression, put it, “I believe, if I were in his shoes, I would step down…I would step down and make sure whoever comes behind me has the ability to change the status-quo that we’re seeing.” That came after the Arab League suspended Syria, ostensibly over its crackdown on protesters, as opposed to the sea of blood Saudi Arabia has created in Bahrain, the scene of astill flickering revolution, and the 30,000 bodies lying in mortuaries in Libya after their Qatari-led liberation.

But the GCC basically owns Jordan: of the top 15 banks, 13 are either directly controlled by the GCC or have a GCC investor as a major shareholder, while the Jordanian stock exchange is utterly dependent on GCC investors—they make up less than 1 percent of shareholders yet represent 20 percent of market capitalization (Adam Hanieh, Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States). Their recent offer to Abdullah to join the formation merely formalizes the relationship.

In Syria, the UN has reported perhaps 3,500 deaths. Observers claim that 250 of them were regime loyalists (the regime claims five times that number). That number of deaths doesn’t occur without guns, held by armed militants hiding out in the Turkish border region. Turkey, while preening about the Palestinians and Gaza out of its mouth while busily destabilizing Syria by harboring anti-regime fighters with its hands, knows that they are there. Indeed the neo-liberal Erdogan’s policies are proving so friendly to the imperial opposition, as opposed to the people, that Syrian opposition activist Burhan Ghalioun has said, “I think that we will work together with Turkey, like Arab countries and European countries, to free this country, Syria.”

Turkey has more projects in Syria than has any other country, while its trade balance with Syria is positive and exceeds one billion dollars. More importantly, Turkey’s largest Arab export market is in the United Arab Emirates: eight billion dollars in 2008. Given the UAE’s central role in the regional counterrevolution, that Turkey has fallen into line behind it and the American government is not a surprise. Erdogan has nearly turned himself into a Turkish doppelganger of an Arab autocrat: talk left on Palestine while walking right on the economy, and then scurry right on Palestine, too, as soon as attention is averted.

It seems clear, then, that as As’ad AbuKhalil comments, the Syrian people are “caught between two counter-revolutions: the regional one spearheaded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar (supported by US and its clients) and the local one perpetrated by the Syrian regime (supported by Iran and its allies). It is not an easy task to launch an assault by the Syrian people against two counter-revolutions.” Human Rights Watch has called for an UN-imposed arms embargo, and the European Union has decided to impose sanctions on 18 Syrians. The empire long ago decided on Syria’s fate.

If the regional counter-revolution wins out, the result will be a further restructuring of the Syrian regime along lines commodious to the interests of those invested in it: Gulf capital. As Salman Shaikh from Brookings comments, “Syria would just be too tempting a target not to be involved in from the outside, and I’m sure the Qataris will be.”

There are voices calling for other options: dialogue with the government, not its violent downfall. They are aware that if somehow the violence spirals to such a point as to take down the government its replacement will be hellish. They are also muffled. The world sees what the loud voices of the opposition and the government wish heard: support for the regime or calls for its eradication.

For that reason. Joseph Massad has written, “The struggle to bring about a democratic regime in Syria has been thoroughly defeated. It was the United States that destroyed Syrian democracy in 1949 when the CIA sponsored the first coup d’état in the country ending democratic rule. It is again the United States that has destroyed the possibility of a democratic outcome of the current popular uprising.” Not because the Syrian people deserve their current government, but because they don’t deserve a worse one.

The dynamics are familiar. In Iran, threats and militarist posturing from the United States and Israel – the latter, taking firm orders vis-à-vis Iran from the former, against destructive hallucinations to the contrary – have led Ahmadinejad critic Khatami to announce, “If there should one day be any military interference in Iran, then all factions, regardless of reformists or non-reformists, would get united and confront the attack.”

The primary task for Western radicals is not to anatomize the social base of support for Bashar al-Assad or to wonder if revolution and democracy can alight down on Syria from B-52s. The correct crucible for revolution is not forged by the Western-imposed economic sanctions that lead to dead children. The task is to try to tie down our government so that its hands are too busy to keep re-arranging the Middle East to facilitate the looting, as it’s been doing for two generations. And, of course, in the process of doing so, we might get it stop the domestic looting as well.

Lauren Pierce needs a history lesson

Nov 18, 2011

annie

I was checking out Lauren Pierce’s tweets and was aghast at her musings about Tel Aviv:

The Jewish people broke ground on Tel Aviv even before WW1 even. “Occupy Palestinian City” rightttttt

Guess that’s what happens when you get your history from StandWithUs.

I recalled a fantastic video I watched on Mondoweiss filmed by Alex Kane during his trip to Israel/Palestine last year called In Ajami and Mas’ha, evidence of the continuing Nakba. It contains a oral history lesson from the very engaging and entertaining Sami Abushhadeh as he stands on a rock in Jaffa overlooking Tel Aviv. I love this video, so naturally I thought Lauren might too.

For more information Sami recommends a book by scholar Mark Levine Overthrowing Geography .

I also recommend:

Palestine Remembered: Jaffa
Zochrot: A Palestinian Village in the Heart of Tel Aviv?
Zochrot: Remembering al-Shaykh Muwannis
JVP: Setting the record straight

Michael Jacobson of the architecture department at Bezalel Academy:

“While many good people, and I among them, were raised on the conception that Tel Aviv was a city born from the sand, it is astounding to discover that the city includes within it a number of sites which until the outbreak of the War of Independence were the sites of Arab villages,” said Jacobson at the symposium at Zochrot.

“Tel Aviv was not born from the sand, was not ‘born from the sea’ and certainly did not ‘walk through the fields.’

And since Lauren is a student I thought it might interest her to know Tel Aviv University was constructed largely on the lands of the Palestinian village Al-Shaykh Muwannis.

Remi Kanazi – This poem will not end apartheid

Nov 18, 2011

Adam Horowitz

France chides Israeli ambassador following consul injury in Gaza attack

Nov 18, 2011

annie

Gazans survey damage from Israeli attack on November 14, 2011
(Photo: Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)

Well, it’s a relief to hear some countries make efforts to support their citizens when Israel attacks.

Reuters

The French consul, his wife and 13-year-old daughter were hit by shrapnel at their residence in Gaza during the strike on Sunday night.

“This morning we reminded the Israeli ambassador how much we deplore the consequences of this raid for the head of our consulate and his family,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said in a regular online briefing.

“While we recognize Israel’s need to ensure its security, he (the ambassador) was reminded about the importance of keeping civilians and the French presence in Gaza from being affected,” he added.

……….

The incident has added to strains in an already tense relationship between France and Israel.

Journalists overheard French President Nicolas Sarkozy describing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “a liar” in a conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama at a G20 summit in Cannes earlier this month.

(Hat tip MW commenter American)

Kissinger: ‘Is there a more self-serving group of people than the Jewish community?’

Nov 18, 2011

Adam Horowitz

Henry Kissinger and Golda Meir. (Photo: Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)

It seems the Israel lobby has not always been held in such high esteem within the White House. The AP reports on newly released documents regarding lobbying in the early 1970s on the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union:

Among the appeals flooding the White House was one from the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to President Richard Nixon in August 1972 asking him to protest to the Kremlin its levying of fees for exit permits.

The White House, defending its strategy of quiet diplomacy, sought to assure the American Jews that Nixon was very concerned about the plight of Soviet Jews, had taken up the issue with Soviet leaders directly and remained convinced that quiet diplomacy was the best approach, the documents related.

A White House official, Leonard Garment, saying he was flooded with letters and phone calls with Jewish appeals, asked Kissinger for help and guidance. The late Alexander Haig, Nixon’s national security adviser, sent him Mrs. Meir’s letter and said “We will have to consider the best means by which to proceed.”

According to transcripts released by the State Department, Kissinger, who was Haig’s deputy, said to Garment: “Is there a more self-serving group of people than the Jewish community?” Kissinger is Jewish.

Garment, also Jewish, replied: “None in the world.”

At this point, Kissinger was quoted as saying “What the hell do they think they are accomplishing?”

Kissinger went on: “You can’t even tell bastards anything in confidence because they’ll leak it.”

But Kissinger said he would take up the issue with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and also meet again with Jewish leaders. “They ought to remember what this administration has done,” he said.

DNC chairwoman seeks to outflank Perry and Romney on the right– on aid to Israel

Nov 18, 2011

Philip Weiss

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic congresswoman from Florida, was appointed to the Democratic National Committee chair in part to reach out to Jewish donors. And true to the job description, she has leaped on the Republican debate of last weekend at which Rick Perry and Mitt Romney suggested they would start all countries at zero in foreign aid.

Wasserman Schultz yesterday sent out a craven email fundraising appeal that bashed the Republicans and called on about backing Israel, below. The letter directs you to a site where the Republicans are characterized as “extreme” isolationists.

Here’s her email:

Kathleen —

Here’s something I never thought I’d hear an American presidential candidate pledge to do:

Cut all foreign aid for Israel to zero.

But that’s exactly what happened at the Republican debate on Saturday, when Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Perry raced each other to the extremes of Tea Party isolationism, saying they’d “start everything at zero” in the foreign aid budget and force Israel and every other ally to make their case for receiving American assistance.

It’s outrageous and dangerous — and it shows a critical ignorance of how a president needs to act. It is never responsible to raise doubts about our commitment to the security of a key ally like Israel.

Stand up to the extreme elements of the Republican Party — join the call to reject “zeroing out” our foreign aid to Israel.

Mitt Romney and other Republican candidates have spent a lot of time lately saying how much they support Israel — and openly questioning President Obama’s commitment to the Jewish state.

But a stance like this tells us two really important things:

1) These guys are so eager to please the most extreme elements of their Tea Party base that they’d forget about one of the most loyal allies our country has.

2) They fundamentally don’t understand our current foreign policy agreements, like the commitments we’ve made to Israel that establish certain levels of aid for years to come.

At the end of the day, foreign aid is a tiny fraction of the federal budget — less than one percent — that goes a long way to support our national security and economic goals abroad. The cuts these candidates propose wouldn’t make a dent in the deficit, but they would wreak absolute havoc on our foreign policy andAmerica’s standing in the world.

In typical fashion, the Romney campaign tried to say two different things to two different audiences, releasing a statement to try to walk back his words — saying he was referring only to Pakistan. But one look at the transcript shows otherwise: “One of the things we have to do with our foreign aid commitments, the ongoing foreign aid commitments, I agree with Governor Perry. You start everything at zero.”

While his campaign is already trying to wiggle out of it, Romney himself has been conspicuously silent on the matter. He might be hoping he can get away with pandering to the Tea Party isolationists, but we won’t let him.

Tell Romney, Gingrich, and Perry that it’s absolutely unacceptable for any presidential candidate to suggest zeroing out our foreign aid to Israel — add your name today to the effort to fight back:

Kathleen —

Here’s something I never thought I’d hear an American presidential candidate pledge to do:

Cut all foreign aid for Israel to zero.

It’s outrageous and dangerous — and it shows a critical ignorance of how a president needs to act. It is never responsible to raise doubts about our commitment to the security of a key ally like Israel.

Stand up to the extreme elements of the Republican Party — join the call to reject “zeroing out” our foreign aid to Israel.

Mitt Romney and other Republican candidates have spent a lot of time lately saying how much they support Israel — and openly questioning President Obama’s commitment to the Jewish state.

But a stance like this tells us two really important things:

1) These guys are so eager to please the most extreme elements of their Tea Party base that they’d forget about one of the most loyal allies our country has.

2) They fundamentally don’t understand our current foreign policy agreements, like the commitments we’ve made to Israel that establish certain levels of aid for years to come.

While his campaign is already trying to wiggle out of it, Romney himself has been conspicuously silent on the matter. He might be hoping he can get away with pandering to the Tea Party isolationists, but we won’t let him.

Tell Romney, Gingrich, and Perry that it’s absolutely unacceptable for any presidential candidate to suggest zeroing out our foreign aid to Israel — add your name today to the effort to fight back:

Thanks,

Debbie

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Chair

Democratic National Committee

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NOVANEWS

Barak orders strike on Gaza during ‘Charlie Rose’– and checks what looks like a Rolex

Nov 18, 2011

Scott Roth and Phil Weiss

Ehud Barak on Charlie Rose Tuesday night

Check out the video of Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Charlie Rose Tuesday night. At 20:00 or so, he says that he has ordered a missile attack on Gaza because of an attack on Israel:

“Today a few hours ago, there was some Hamas… probably a crazy guy, he’s a Hamas guy… he shot at Israel [perhaps this attack] and we now, probably when we are talking, I ordered some attacks on some installations of Hamas.”

As he mentions his orders, Barak checks his watch. It looks like a steel and gold Rolex. Countless human rights reports have suggested that Barak is a war criminal for leading the attack on Gaza in 2008-2009. Isn’t this an unseemly performance for American television?

Egypt, Syria, and the dynamics of counter-revolution

Nov 18, 2011

Max Ajl

Lauren Pierce needs a history lesson

Nov 18, 2011

annie

I was checking out Lauren Pierce’s tweets and was aghast at her musings about Tel Aviv:

The Jewish people broke ground on Tel Aviv even before WW1 even. “Occupy Palestinian City” rightttttt

Guess that’s what happens when you get your history from StandWithUs.

For more information Sami recommends a book by scholar Mark Levine Overthrowing Geography .

I also recommend:

Palestine Remembered: Jaffa

Zochrot: A Palestinian Village in the Heart of Tel Aviv?

Zochrot: Remembering al-Shaykh Muwannis

JVP: Setting the record straight

Michael Jacobson of the architecture department at Bezalel Academy:

“Tel Aviv was not born from the sand, was not ‘born from the sea’ and certainly did not ‘walk through the fields.’

And since Lauren is a student I thought it might interest her to know Tel Aviv University was constructed largely on the lands of the Palestinian village Al-Shaykh Muwannis.

Remi Kanazi – This poem will not end apartheid

Nov 18, 2011

Adam Horowitz

France chides Israeli ambassador following consul injury in Gaza attack

Nov 18, 2011

annie

Gazans survey damage from Israeli attack on November 14, 2011 (Photo: Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)

Well, it’s a relief to hear some countries make efforts to support their citizens when Israel attacks.

The French consul, his wife and 13-year-old daughter were hit by shrapnel at their residence in Gaza during the strike on Sunday night.

“This morning we reminded the Israeli ambassador how much we deplore the consequences of this raid for the head of our consulate and his family,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said in a regular online briefing.

“While we recognize Israel’s need to ensure its security, he (the ambassador) was reminded about the importance of keeping civilians and the French presence in Gaza from being affected,” he added.

……….

The incident has added to strains in an already tense relationship between France and Israel.

Journalists overheard French President Nicolas Sarkozy describing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “a liar” in a conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama at a G20 summit in Cannes earlier this month.

(Hat tip MW commenter American)

Kissinger: ‘Is there a more self-serving group of people than the Jewish community?’

Nov 18, 2011

Adam Horowitz

Henry Kissinger and Golda Meir. (Photo: Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)

It seems the Israel lobby has not always been held in such high esteem within the White House. The AP reports on newly released documents regarding lobbying in the early 1970s on the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union:

Among the appeals flooding the White House was one from the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to President Richard Nixon in August 1972 asking him to protest to the Kremlin its levying of fees for exit permits.

The White House, defending its strategy of quiet diplomacy, sought to assure the American Jews that Nixon was very concerned about the plight of Soviet Jews, had taken up the issue with Soviet leaders directly and remained convinced that quiet diplomacy was the best approach, the documents related.

According to transcripts released by the State Department, Kissinger, who was Haig’s deputy, said to Garment: “Is there a more self-serving group of people than the Jewish community?” Kissinger is Jewish.

Garment, also Jewish, replied: “None in the world.”

At this point, Kissinger was quoted as saying “What the hell do they think they are accomplishing?”

Kissinger went on: “You can’t even tell bastards anything in confidence because they’ll leak it.”

But Kissinger said he would take up the issue with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and also meet again with Jewish leaders. “They ought to remember what this administration has done,” he said.

DNC chairwoman seeks to outflank Perry and Romney on the right– on aid to Israel

Nov 18, 2011

Philip Weiss

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Wasserman Schultz yesterday sent out a craven email fundraising appeal that bashed the Republicans and called on about backing Israel, below. The letter directs you to a site where the Republicans are characterized as “extreme” isolationists.

Here’s her email:

Kathleen —

Here’s something I never thought I’d hear an American presidential candidate pledge to do:

Cut all foreign aid for Israel to zero.

It’s outrageous and dangerous — and it shows a critical ignorance of how a president needs to act. It is never responsible to raise doubts about our commitment to the security of a key ally like Israel.

Mitt Romney and other Republican candidates have spent a lot of time lately saying how much they support Israel — and openly questioning President Obama’s commitment to the Jewish state.

But a stance like this tells us two really important things:

1) These guys are so eager to please the most extreme elements of their Tea Party base that they’d forget about one of the most loyal allies our country has.

2) They fundamentally don’t understand our current foreign policy agreements, like the commitments we’ve made to Israel that establish certain levels of aid for years to come.

While his campaign is already trying to wiggle out of it, Romney himself has been conspicuously silent on the matter. He might be hoping he can get away with pandering to the Tea Party isolationists, but we won’t let him.

Tell Romney, Gingrich, and Perry that it’s absolutely unacceptable for any presidential candidate to suggest zeroing out our foreign aid to Israel — add your name today to the effort to fight back:

Thanks,

Debbie

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Chair

Democratic National Committee

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Gazans survey damage from Israeli attack on November 14, 2011
(Photo: Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)