Political Insider:  Nader Blasts Obama On Israel

 
Now, things start to get really interesting.

In launching his third independent bid for the White House Sunday, Ralph Nader accomplished several things with just a few short sentences.

    * He raised the Middle East as a contentious issue for the first time in the campaign.

    * He became the first person to accuse Barak Obama of being too pro-Israel.

   
* And he guaranteed some major attention to his campaign with incendiary language about Israel that will surely create a response from the other candidates and Jewish groups.

(Watch the MSNBC video here)

Speaking to Tim Russert on “Meet The Press,” the consumer crusader and Green Party activist reacted to dismissive comments Obama made about him Saturday with this rejoinder:

"His better instincts and knowledge have been censored by himself, and I give you an example: the Israeli–Palestinian issue, which is a real off the table issue for the candidates. Don't touch that, even though it is central to our security and to the situation in the Middle East.

"He (Obama) was pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois, before he ran for the state senate, during the state senate.

"Now he is supporting the Israeli destruction of the tiny section called Gaza, with a million and half people. He doesn't have any sympathy for a civilian death ratio of about 300 to one, 300 Palestinians to one Israeli.”

Unfortunately, Russert was too eager to press Nader about the ramifications of his entry into the race to probe this bizarre assertion about Gaza, from which Israel completely withdrew in 2005, and from which the Palestinians have since regularly launched rocket barrages across southern Israel.

But Nader wasn’t done yet.

“He has not taken a leadership position in supporting the Israeli peace movement, which represents former cabinet ministers, people in the Knesset, former generals, former security officials, in addition to mayors and leading intellectuals. One would think he would at least say, lets have a hearing for the Israeli peace movement in the Congress, so we don't just have a monotone support of the Israeli government 's attitudes toward the Palestinian people and their illegal occupation of Palestine.”

Nader is under no illusions that he’ll be elected, but he said his presence in the race would “open doors” to discussing key issues, and he may well accomplish that when it comes to the hitherto ignored topic of the Middle East.

PermaLink