The Wonk Room

Right-Wing Pro-Israel Groups Coordinating With Bibi

Via Attackerman, James Besser reports that “groups on the Jewish and Christian right say they’re ready to run interference for [Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu] in Congress, especially if the Barack Obama administration decides to move aggressively on Palestinian statehood, or even presses on sensitive issues such as Israeli settlements.”

“There’s a kindred spirit between Christian Zionists and Netanyahu,” said the Rev. James Hutchens, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian group. “He has demonstrated his willingness to reach out to us in the past and he shares our views. He is much more resistant to giving up land for peace — he’s referred to it as land for terror. I’m looking forward to working with him in any way we can.” [...]

[Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America] admitted, “We have been in contact with a number of Bibi’s confidants, and the impression they give is that this will be a very tough government — that there will be no concessions without a transformation in the [Palestinian] culture. And they said they were very appreciative of our efforts to bring that message to Congress.”

It seems to me that if you had groups of, for example, Arab-American lobbyists openly talking about how they were going to work in concert with a foreign government to frustrate U.S. foreign policy aims, it would be a pretty big deal. I’m almost certain that conservatives would be up in arms. Andy McCarthy would attack the media for not reporting it correctly. Frank Gaffney would quickly churn out a dubiously-sourced report. And Daniel Pipes and the gang at Middle East Forum would be flooding my inbox with splenetic warnings of the Islamist/Sharia/Wahabbi conspiracy to steal America’s vital essence — not that they don’t do that anyway.

As it is, Pipes is already helping to run interference for the new right-wing Israeli government, praising foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman’s speech yesterday — in which the racist extremist Lieberman declared that Israel’s commitments at the 2007 Annapolis peace conference had “no validity” — as a “brilliant debut.”

According to Besser’s article, one of the right-wing Christian groups involved in lobbying for Netanyahu’s agenda is Christians United For Israel (CUFI), led by Rev. John Hagee. Last May, Sen. John McCain was forced to reject Hagee’s presidential endorsement after ThinkProgress and other organizations publicized various offensive positions Hagee holds, such as that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for teh gay, and that “God allowed [the Holocaust] to happen” in order to help re-establish the state of Israel and bring about the End Times.