I try to keep this blog free of presidential election fodder, but this one is the exception.
To those in the orthodox community who even had a little
itty bitty thought of voting for
Barack Obama (and I'm betting there are very few of you), this may be the clincher for John McCain.
Barack Obama's "Senior Middle East Advisor" is none other than our former ambassador to Egypt and Israel, Daniel
Kurtzer.
This is the same Daniel
Kurtzer who graduated Yeshiva University and then in his PhD dissertation at Columbia proceeded to rip Israel.
As a State Department official,
Kurtzer helped formulate the decision by the US to recognize the PLO and
Yasser Arafat (may he rot in hell).
Kurtzer is of the belief that both sides are equally to blame for the Middle East conflict.
Kurtzer was the author of George Schultz' 1988 speech which recognized "the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including political rights."
Kurtzer coined the term "land for peace" in a speech he wrote for James Baker.
Yitzhak Shamir referred to
Kurtzer as "Baker's little Jew."
In a recent book,
Kurtzer blames Israel for the failure of the Camp David II summit with Bill Clinton,
Ehud Barak and Arafat: "During the Camp David II summit in July, there was much more back and forth between the United States and Israel than was the case in Geneva, but in the end Clinton acceded to
Barak's request to blame Arafat publicly for the summit's failure."
Just this summer,
Kurtzer traveled to Syria and gave "advice" to Syria's Foreign Minister,
Walid al-
Moallem.
"Jews like
Kurtzer chose to ignore the Zionist revolution and the opportunity it offers to serve your people first," said
Efraim Zuroff. "And one of the tenets of Orthodoxy is that the interest of your people always takes priority."
His anti-Israel policies caused the late Rabbi Pinchas
Teitz to ban
Kurtzer from the
shuls in his hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey. When Kurtzer lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, his shul, The Kemp Mill Synagogue, suddenly had to stop raising money for charities which helped people who lived in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. [One of his fellow congregants at KMS was 'Rabbi' Dov Zakheim, the former US official who helped kill Israel's Lavi jet fighter program].
(Not to mention Kurtzer's dismal failure as commissioner of the doomed Israel Baseball League last summer).
This man is now
Barack Obama's "senior Middle East advisor." And there are orthodox
jews who might still vote Democrat.
Oy.