Senator Ted Cruz: Obama is most hostile U.S. president to Israel in modern times

In interview with Haaretz, the controversial Texas Republican lambasts the president’s ‘appeasement’ of Iran and Vladimir Putin, tears his Israel policies to shreds and even has an unkind word for AIPAC.

By Chemi Shalevd, HAARETZ

“President Obama has been the president most hostile to the nation of Israel in modern times” – this is the harsh if somewhat unsurprising verdict of firebrand Republican Senator Ted Cruz.

In an interview with Haaretz on the sidelines of the AIPAC Policy Conference this week, the former Texas solicitor general laid out the various counts of his indictment of Obama. The U.S. President, Cruz said, has undermined Israel’s national security as well as the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States. And Obama’s talks with Iran and relaxation of sanctions against Tehran “may well be setting the stage for the slaughter of millions of Israelis – or millions of Americans.”

Cruz says the U.S. has no business pressuring or criticizing Israel and he denounced Obama’s “hectoring”interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in Bloomberg this week. By publicly pressuring Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu while “praising” Iranian President Rohani and “moderating his tone” towards Vladimir Putin, Cruz says, Obama has U.S. foreign policy “exactly backwards.”

“For the president of the United States to threaten Israel with international isolation and to not-too-subtly threaten a withdrawal of American support for Israel is profoundly misguided and dangerous both the nation of Israel and to the United States.”

And it’s not only Obama who is at fault, but the entire Democratic leadership. Citing his sponsorship of the now-stalled Iran sanctions bill submitted by Senators Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez, Cruz said by blocking the vote on the bill “President Obama and Hillary Clinton and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid have abandoned their support for Israel and have paved the way for Iran to potentially acquire nuclear weapons.”

And AIPAC, Cruz states unequivocally, erred when it agreed to postpone the Senate vote on the Kirk-Menendez bill. “Everyone who stands with the nation of Israel should insist upon a vote and if President Obama wants to follow through with his threat to veto such legislation, he should be forced to do so.” Asked if he has made his position known to AIPAC leaders, Cruz said: “I have many faults, but an unwillingness to speak my mind is not one of them.”

Indeed, the 43-year-old graduate of Princeton and Harvard minces no words, though he speaks slowly and deliberately, dictation-style, formulating his thoughts in precise sentences that require almost no editing before publication. He is merciless in lambasting Obama and his Administration in apocalyptic terms that have made him a darling of the conservative and Jewish right while earning him ridicule, scorn but also fear on the Democratic left.

The Canada-born Texas senator, whose Cuban father opposed Castro, has a structured explanation for the current crisis in the Ukraine and he knows exactly where to pin the blame. “For five years under President Obama, America’s leadership in the world has consistently receded. As a direct consequence we’ve seen the spheres of influence of Russia and Iran and China expanding. For five years President Obama has alienated and abandoned our friends and allies and has pursued appeasement in negotiations with our enemies.

“Putin’s aggressiveness and act of war against Ukraine was eminently predictable, because Putin has worked systematically to reassemble the old Soviet Union, to expand Russia’s dominance, and to subjugate peoples who had been freed by the end of the Cold War. Putin acts with impunity because he fears no meaningful reprisals from President Obama.”

Cruz says Obama erred by failing to “embrace” the Ukrainian revolution from the outset. The president should have offered an immediate free trade agreement and economic incentives as well as “assisting with energy infrastructure so that America could begin exporting liquid natural gas to the Ukraine. The US, Cruz says, “could benefit American interests and at the same time help free Ukraine from the economic blackmail that it’s been subjected to by Russia.”

Cruz says that Obama’s pledge to “stand with the world community in ensuring there is a cost” to Russian’s invasion of Ukraine “are certain to produce no more than guffaws from Putin.” The US, he says, should move to expel Russia from the G-8, review existing treaties with Moscow, return to “previously agreed anti-missile facilities in Eastern Europe that President Obama cancelled in order to appease Putin” and implement the Magnitzky act, which allows the US to target individual Russian human rights offenders.

“The only language Mr. Putin understands is strength,” Cruz says, “but this is something the Administration seems incapable of providing.”

In words that will undoubtedly please right wingers in both Israel and the United States, Cruz states his opposition to any U.S. pressure on while refusing to get pinned down on his own attitude towards settlements or a two-state solution. “The US should not be pressuring or hectoring or blackmailing Israel to accept terms that in Israel’s judgment are inconsistent with protecting its national security,” he says. He accuses the Administration of “embracing a false moral equivalence between the Israelis and Palestinians” adding that “so long as Palestinians continue to embrace terrorism and refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation, there will be no peace.”

He describes both settlements and the establishments of a Palestinian state as “issues that should be decided between the two sides.” The US, he adds, “should not be imposing its views on Israel any more than foreign nations should be imposing their views on US national security within our borders.”

He has no regrets over his outspoken opposition to the appointment of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense at the hearings held by the Senate Armed Services committee last year, which earned him much media attention as well as criticism from some of his Republican colleagues. “I wish the Senate had heeded the warnings so many of us raised about Secretary Hagel’s extreme foreign policy record and about what it augured for President Obama’s foreign policy direction. Unfortunately, Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats demonstrated that partisan loyalty mattered more than standing with the nation of Israel. Every Senate Democrat in straight party line vote voted to confirm Secretary Hagel despite his extreme foreign policy views and publicly absolved him of the false moral equivalence that he had espoused just like President Obama between Israelis acting to defend themselves and their right to exist as a nation and Palestinian terrorists murdering innocent men, women and children.”

He also refuses to get drawn into the question of why American Jews persistently vote for Democratic Presidential candidates, despite his portrayals of their perfidy towards Israel. “That’s a decision for every Jewish voter to make, for every American to make,” he says, but adds: “I do not think any fair minded observer in the United States who is concerned about maintaining and strengthening our friendship with Israel can conclude anything other than that the President Obama and the Democrats are pursuing a course of action that grievously undermines the national security of Israel.”

March 5, 2014 | 15 Comments »

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  1. @ ppksky:

    “Ted Cruz is a Canadian and unfit to be holding elected office in the United States. Throw him out of office and throw him out of the United States.”

    Actually he has dual citizenship.

    Is Ted Cruz, born in Canada, eligible to run for president?

    By Angie Drobnic Holan, Tampa Bay Times, Tuesday, August 20th, 2013

    Can Ted Cruz run for president if he was born in Canada?

    The Republican senator from Texas says he can. And just to be sure, he’s taking the extra step of renouncing the Canadian citizenship he says he didn’t even know he had.

    Cruz — full name: Rafael Edward Cruz –was born in Canada in 1970 because his father was working for the oil industry there. The senator’s recently released birth certificate shows his mother was born in Delaware and his father was born in Cuba. The Cruz family left Canada a few years later. Cruz grew up in Texas and graduated from high school there, later attending Princeton University and Harvard Law School.

    By virtue of his American-born mother, Cruz, 42, considers himself a natural born citizen and eligible to run for president.

    So is he eligible? The vast majority of legal thought and arguments indicate he is.

    Is there the tiniest sliver of uncertainty? Yes, there’s that, too.

    Constitutional requirements

    The Constitution says any candidate for president must be 35 years of age, a resident within the United States for 14 years and a “natural born citizen.”

    We’ve looked at the question of natural born citizenship before. Back in 2008, people raised questions about the “natural born” citizenship status of both major party candidates.

    We’ve fact-checked several statements about President Barack Obama’s place of birth and his birth certificate. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and his mother was a U.S. citizen. His father was Kenyan.

    We also looked at the case of John McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone because his American father served in the military. McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee, saw his standing briefly challenged in court.

    Interestingly, both of McCain’s potential Democratic opponents — Obama and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton — co-sponsored a Senate measure to settle McCain’s eligibility. The April 2008 resolution said, “John Sidney McCain, III, is a ‘natural born Citizen’ under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States.”

    Defining “natural born”

    So what is a “natural born” citizen? The Constitution doesn’t specifically say.

    In 2008, we reviewed research and polled several legal experts. The consensus was that someone is a “natural born” citizen if they have citizenship at birth and don’t have to go through a naturalization process to become a citizen.

    If that’s the definition, then Cruz is a natural born citizen by being born to an American mother and having her citizenship at birth. (This same logic would apply to Obama, even if he were born in another country, which he wasn’t.)

    The Congressional Research Service published a report on the issue after the 2008 election; the agency is tasked with providing authoritative research to all members of Congress. It, too, supported the thinking that “natural born” citizenship means citizenship held “at birth.”

    But the Supreme Court — the ultimate arbiter of constitutional questions — has never ruled on the matter. And that means a note of uncertainty remains.

    Sarah H. Duggin, a professor of law at Catholic University, has written about and studied the issue extensively. She told us in 2008 that the question of natural born citizenship is “one of the most deceptively simple, complex issues.”

    We reached her again this week to ask about Cruz’s eligibility. “It would be reasonable to interpret the Constitution’s natural born citizenship provision to include children born abroad to U.S. citizens, including Senator Cruz, for a number of reasons,” she said.

    But is it 100 percent sure?

    “Unfortunately, we cannot say for sure without either a definitive Supreme Court ruling, or an amendment to clarify the Constitution.”

  2. Laura Said:

    All true, but might the isolationism of the Tea Party wing of the GOP have something to do with all this as well?

    I do not think so. The Tea Party is a movement of socially, fiscally conservative common americans who believe in a limited government, which lives with in its means. I donot why some call them “isolationists”. USA with over $17 trillion in debts; unfunded liability of about $100 trillion and budget deficits is not in good shape. If the country is not listening to those in Tea Party and make a u turn, there is no way for it to honor its obligation sooner or later. Criticizing the Tea party won’t solve the country’s out of control debts. The Tea Party should be commended for its stand.
    I donot know how any one could compare the Tea Party to Putin’s take over of Crimea and his aggressive actions against some of the countries under the former USSR.

  3. Laura Said:

    There is no law against someone foreign born being in Congress. However the constitution does say that only natural born American citizens can be president, schmuck.

    Thanks Laura for your comment. It is absolutely correct. Lawyers have some different views in defining the natural born requirement. Because of various law suits against BHO we may be able to know about it before the next 2016 election.

  4. the phoenix Said:

    Vell…. It is vorse zan dat….
    Does ze name Kissinger (SPIT!!!) ring a bell?

    Thanks for your insight. I agree with your statement. Yes, it does ring a bell!

  5. ppksky Said:

    Nobody who is not born in the US should be holding any elected office anywhere, state or federal. It’s getting bad, folks. Cruz is not eligible for the presidency and anyone who supports his presidency bid is a traitor just like those who supported Obama. Cruz and Obama are the same problem.

    No one knows whether or not Cruz may run for the presidency in 2016. His mother was a natural-born US citizen. Do you know the qualification for US presidency, Senate and other offices? BHO and Cruz donot have similar issues when it comes to a birth certificate etc. No body knows for sure where BHO was born to date. Cruz’s birth place is known and he has also a valid birth certificate unlike BHO. Cruz’s mother was a natural born US citizen who was more than 18 years old and could pass her citizenship to her child unlike BHO’s (whose mother cannot pass her citizenship to him because of her age and the unfulfilled requirement of her stay as resident of USA before giving birth to BHO).
    No one has objected to Cruz’s becoming a senator based on US Constitution.
    Your assertions are, therefore, unwarranted, undeserved and vicious personal attack.

    Lawyers have different views regarding natural birth to be president. Because of various law suits, hopefully, we may have a better understanding before the next election.

  7. @ ppksky:
    There is no law against someone foreign born being in Congress. However the constitution does say that only natural born American citizens can be president, schmuck.

  8. “Putin’s aggressiveness and act of war against Ukraine was eminently predictable, because Putin has worked systematically to reassemble the old Soviet Union, to expand Russia’s dominance, and to subjugate peoples who had been freed by the end of the Cold War. Putin acts with impunity because he fears no meaningful reprisals from President Obama.”

    All true, but might the isolationism of the Tea Party wing of the GOP have something to do with all this as well?

  9. It is completely warranted, deserved and justified. Cruz represents exactly the same rot that Obama does. Nobody who is not born in the US should be holding any elected office anywhere, state or federal. It’s getting bad, folks. Cruz is not eligible for the presidency and anyone who supports his presidency bid is a traitor just like those who supported Obama. Cruz and Obama are the same problem.

  11. ppksky Said:

    Ted Cruz is a Canadian and unfit to be holding elected office in the United States. Throw him out of office and throw him out of the United States.

    This is unwarranted, undeserved vicious personal attack against the honorable senator from Texas. What did he do to you or what you may believe in?
    I have read a report that says he renounced his canadian citizenship. The Constitution of the US allows him to hold an elected office. That is why he is the Senator from Texas.
    USA to date doesn’t know where and when BHO was born; his school records; his actual social security number (believed to be a forgery); so many law suits are going on to know about his background and he is spending millions to hide them for a reason.
    It seems to me you are just a hater.

  12. ppksky Said:

    Ted Cruz is a Canadian and unfit to be holding elected office in the United States. Throw him out of office and throw him out of the United States.

    But of course a bastard born is Kenya is ok…
    Yup!…..
    🙂

  13. Ted Cruz is a Canadian and unfit to be holding elected office in the United States. Throw him out of office and throw him out of the United States.

  14. Senator Cruz is precisely on target.
    The controversial US President, Mr. Obama, long before his election was a known quantity.
    Clear indicators spoke of a controversial birth, controversial upbringing among radicals, controversial education of sorts, and being the porter of an array of parameters identifying him as virulently inimical to Israel. His election by a landslide included 80% of “Jewish” voters, that coinciding with those voters being unJewish in nature and performing many activities to harm Israel, was an omen.
    As expected, the Israeli renegade “elites” joined Mr. Obama on his quest.
    Our business is with the later.
    The US voter is free to make their choices, not us.

  15. I do not think any fair minded observer in the United States who is concerned about maintaining and strengthening our friendship with Israel can conclude anything other than that the President Obama and the Democrats are pursuing a course of action that grievously undermines the national security of Israel.”

    Senator Ted Cruz is right. What is wrong with Jewish in USA and the left in Israel? Isn’t it high time for them (those in USA) to vote for those who support the only one Jewish state in the world, Israel? Believe it or not, seeing the agitation against Israel/Jewish going on by radical left and the democratic party, sooner or later, Jewish may face inconvenience in USA. I hope to be wrong in this.
    Isn’t it high time to wake up and do what is right? What are they waiting for?