Yesterday, six of the seven top Republican presidential candidates had their opportunities to hold forth on their feelings about Israel and other topics at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s presidential candidates forum.
The one conspicuously missing candidate (not counting longshot gay Jewish GOP hopeful Fred Karger) was libertarian/isolationist congressman Ron Paul, who wasn’t invited. The RJC’s executive director Matt Brooks said the exclusion was due to Paul’s "misguided and extreme views."
Brooks may have been referring to Paul’s support for ending all U.S. foreign aid to Israel (as well as to all other countries). Or maybe to Paul’s suggestion that the Iranian nuclear threat is “blown out of proportion” and that instead of sanctions, we should be “"maybe offering friendship to them." (Who knows? Maybe Paul’s old newsletters were even a factor.)
But in any case, Paul wasn’t at the RJC forum, so he had to find other means of letting people know about his feelings toward Israel.
So he gave an interview on U.S.-Israel relations to the conservative media outlet Newsmax. His campaign is also touting a new video interview on the topic.
In the video Paul says he is “disappointed" that he couldn’t go to the RJC gathering. (“My guess is that my views weren’t welcome,” he said.)
Given that Paul doesn’t support American aid to Israel and doesn’t support sanctions on Iran (or even see the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program as cause for much concern), what is Paul’s pitch to the pro-Israel voter?
Here are some of his talking points from the campaign video and Newsmax interviews:
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• Insistence that the U.S. should be Israel’s “friend and their trading partner.”
• Praise for “the original idea of Zionism,” namely “Jewish independence and Jewish self-reliance.”
• Assetion ending aid to Israel would free it of its dependence on the U.S. “(They are a democracy and we share many values with them. But we should not be their master.”)
• Opposition to any U.S. efforts to “dictate” Israeli borders or negotiating positions, and criticism of President Obama on that front
• Opposition to U.S. aid for Israel’s not-so-friendly neighbors (since, of course, he opposes all foreign aid)
• His refusal back in 1981 to criticize Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor (Notwithstanding his previously articulated view that the Iranian nuclear threat is “blown out of proportion,” in his video interview Paul says that the current “conditions are very similar" and that he supports Israel’s right to strike Iran “if they believe it’s in their national security interest. That should be their decisions and not ours.”)
For the most part though, these points are all of a piece with Paul’s preference for noninterference and not taking sides in foreign affairs.
Paul made only one concrete nod toward anything that could be construed as a special relationship between the U.S. and Israel: “We should honor our pledge to refuse any arms sales that would undermine Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region.”
