It was not surprising to me that in his column today in the New York Times, William Kristol is completely and thoroughly wrong. Everything he says is totally and demonstrably false. What surprised me was how thoroughly dishonest the column is, especially the following excerpt:
In synagogue, right after the prayer for our country, there is a prayer for the state of Israel, asking the “rock and redeemer of the people Israel” to “spread over it the shelter of your peace.” As we recited this on Saturday, I couldn’t help but reflect that a distressingly small number of my fellow Jews seem to have given much thought at all to the fact that President Bush is one of the greatest friends the state of Israel — and, yes, the Jewish people — have had in quite a while. Bush stood with Israel when he had no political incentive to do so and received no political benefit from doing so. He was criticized by much of the world. He did it because he thought it the right thing to do.
As William Kristol knows very well polls show that the vast majority of America's Jews have great misgivings about the wisdom of the sort of military solutions to Israel's disputes with the Palestinians that Kristol and his fellow neocons, including President Bush, support. It is not through some oversight or lack of thought that most American Jews are not celbrating President Bush as a savior of Israel.
Equally dishonest is Mr. Kristol's amazing claim that it is of no political benefit to an American politician to be a strong supporter of Israel's government, and therefore the politician must be doing it because of a personal conviction that it is the right thing to do. After the injury of AIPAC having hijacked our political process on this issue so that almost all our politicians are forced to blindly support Israel's every policy mistake this insult is almost too much to bear. Kristol's assertion that Bush is acting against his political interests in supporting Israel is chutzpah of the highest order.
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