Corey Booker:
Democratic Presidential Candidate With Mixed Record on Israel
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By JNS February 3, 2019 , 1:56 pm
“Behold, I will
make Yerushalayim a bowl of reeling for the peoples all around. Yehuda shall be
caught up in the siege upon Yerushalayim.” Zechariah 12:2 (The Israel Bible™)
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) holds a sign reading:
“From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go.” Credit: Twitter via
U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker announced on Friday that
he is entering the 2020 presidential race.
Since being elected to the Senate in 2012 after serving
as mayor of Newark, his record on Israel has been mixed at best, and sometimes
going back and forth on certain issues.
In 2016, Booker, 49, who represents a state with more than half a millionJews,
labeled BDS as an “anti-Jewish movement” and last year co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act that
would prohibit American businesses from boycotting the Jewish state.
“We’ve seen the alarming rise in anti-Semitism in the
United States and across the world in recent years manifest itself in many
deeply concerning ways, including in the actions of foreign governments
targeting Israel and the Israeli people,” he said.
However, on Tuesday he voted against the
Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act—legislation that is
a combination of four bills,
including one that would enable state and local governments in the United
States to fight BDS.
He also posed last August with a sign from a pro-BDS group that
read “From Palestine to Mexico. All the walls have got to go,” a motto coined
by the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
Per the watchdog organization NGO Monitor, “USCPR
is a national coalition of hundreds of groups working to advocate for
Palestinian rights and a shift in U.S. policy, and is a leader and mobilizer of
anti-Israel BDS campaigns.”
In a statement to JNS at the time,
Booker’s communication’s director, Jeff Giertz, said the senator didn’t realize
the sign related to Israel when the picture was taken.
“Just before delivering a speech in New Orleans,
Senator Booker was approached by dozens of people for photos,” he
said. “In one instance, amid the rush, he was posing for a photo and was passed
a sign to hold—he didn’t have time to read the sign, and from his cursory
glance he thought it was talking about Mexico and didn’t realize it had
anything to do with Israel.”
“He hopes for a day when there will be no need for security
barriers in the State of Israel, but while active terrorist organizations
threaten the safety of the people living in Israel, security barriers are
unfortunate but necessary to protect human lives,” added Giertz.
On Iran: From ‘poses a threat to American security’ to
‘a point of no return’
Regarding Iran, Booker said in a position paper when
running for the Senate that “as a state sponsor of terrorism, Iran poses a
threat to American security, a threat made worse by their pursuit of nuclear
technology in defiance of the international community and their own treaty
obligations. A nuclear-armed Iran is plainly unacceptable. It would pose
serious threats to American interests and to our allies,
particularly Israel.”
Despite the pressure placed on him by allies such
as Rabbi Shmuely Boteach,
Booker supported the
2015 Iran nuclear deal, calling it “the better of two flawed options.”
“Despite its significant shortcomings, we have passed a
point of no return,” said Booker. “Accepting this deal and moving forward with
vigilance and continued commitment to keeping Iran from obtaining a nuclear
weapon is preferable to a world in which a debilitated sanctions regime and
fractured community of nations allows Iran to acquire many of the benefits of
this deal without accepting its meaningful constraints.”
Boteach, who has known Booker since their time at Oxford
University, reacted critically to Booker’s presidential campaign announcement:
“My friend @corybooker announces for @Potus but will lose unless he repudiates
utterly his support for #Iran & reverses his eroding support for #Israel as
this betrays American values, shows weakness in foreign policy, proves he puts
politics before principle, and abandons friends,” he tweeted.
“Since our time together at #Oxford where Cory served as
my student president I believed he could be president & we remained close
like brothers. But since embracing #Iran deal & gradual abandonment of
Israel his prospects have eroded. He must show he stands friends &
convictions,” added Boteach.
Nonetheless, Booker has expressed concerns ranging
from Iran testing ballistic
missiles to the U.S. Treasury Department suspending countermeasures against
Iran’s financial sponsorship of terrorism to the International Atomic Energy
Agency’s reports on the regime
complyingwith the nuclear agreement.
As expected, he opposed U.S.
President Donald Trump withdrawing America from
the nuclear accord, saying, “The President’s announcement is nothing less than
an abdication of American leadership that jeopardizes our national security,
makes the world less safe and increases the prospect of Iran developing a
nuclear weapon.”
“Make no mistake, I had concerns about the Iran nuclear
agreement when I voted on it, but an imperfect deal with years remaining to
conduct further diplomacy was and remains better than a nuclear-armed Iran,” he
continued. “The President’s decision puts the U.S. in default of our
commitments to the international community and our closest allies.”
Following the party on Mideast issues and concerns
Along with the rest of his party, Booker also opposed the nomination of
David Friedman in March 2017 to be U.S. ambassador to Israel: “I am deeply
concerned that confirming David Friedman to serve as ambassador to Israel would
damage the prospects of finding a two-state solution between the Israelis and
Palestinians, the only path to a lasting peace that would bring true security
and Middle East stability,” he said.
Moreover, Booker was against the United States officially
recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017, in addition to
relocating its embassy there last May from Tel Aviv.
“It should be part of negotiations for eventual final
status,” Booker told The Weekly Standard.
“We need to be working towards peace in that region.”
In April 2017, Booker signed onto a letter to
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, calling for the end of the world
body’s animosity towards the Jewish state.
Rising from serving in local government and Congress to
running for the White House, Booker’s stances related to the U.S.-Israel
relationship have shifted in an apparent attempt to appeal to all factions on
the left and in the Democratic Party. According to the latest POLITICO/Morning Consult poll,
Booker is only at 3 percent.
Whether he will backtrack on his stances to appeal to
Boteach and those similar to him remains to be seen.
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