Friday 28 August 2009

ESHMAN: Ted Kennedy, Israel and the Jews – d.25Aug09

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August 27, 2009

Ted Kennedy copy

by Rob Eshman – extract from his blog in the JewishJournal.com - 25 August 2009

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) died Tuesday, Aug. 25, at the age of 77.

His death, as the saying goes, shall, or at least should, be mourned in Zion. . . From his first year in the Senate, 1962, until his last votes, Kennedy was a stalwart Israel supporter.

According to one tally, Ted Kennedy voted 100 percent in concert with positions taken by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Tom Dine, who served as Aipac’s executive director from 1980-93, was a defense and foreign policy advisor to Kennedy.

In the run-up to his tough 1994 Senate campaign against Mitt Romney, Kennedy accumulated some $45,000 from pro-Israel political action committees over the years, according to former Aipac legislative director Doug Bloomfield, “and presumably a lot more from individual pro-Israel donors, considering his long record of support for U.S. taxpayer aid for Israel.”

The relationship was mutually beneficial—either a testament to Kennedy’s bedrock values or his astute political instincts. Take the Carter race.

In the 1980 presidential race, writes Jeffrey S. Helmreich, “polls indicated that Carter would beat Kennedy in the New York Democratic primary by a margin of 54 to 28 percent. But on March 1, Carter’s UN Ambassador, Donald F. McHenry, voted for a viciously anti-Israel resolution in the UN Security Council condemning Israeli settlement activity in Jerusalem. Three weeks later, Kennedy beat Carter in New York by 59 percent to 41 percent.”

In a statement following Kennedy’s death, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “(Senator) Kennedy has been a friend for 30 years, a great American patriot, a great champion of a better world, a great friend of Israel. He will be sorely missed.”

LINK: http://www.jewishjournal.com/bloggish/item/ted_kennedy_israel_and_the_jews_20090826/

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