The Democratic Party’s Anti-Israel Problem

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida was a guest on Secure Freedom Radio with Frank Gaffney this week. She is the Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa.

Gaffney brought up the fact that two Bernie Sanders supporters who are vehemently anti-Israel have been appointed to the Democratic Party platform committee. Gaffney wondered if this fundamentally changes the party’s stance on Israel and how DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz would deal with this.

Ros-Lehtinen mentioned that being from Florida, she knows Wasserman Schultz and that the two are friendly but expressed concerns with the path the Democrats are on with Israel:

“I’ve gotta admit that that causes me a lot of grief to think that the platform for either party would ever turn into something that is neutral on the issue of the protection and security of Israel, so I hope that folks who are involved in the setting of the platform will fight to make sure that it is a strong platform in both parties about the security of Israel and anybody who’s been to Israel understands, has an even better understanding of how fragile the security is for Israel even though they have a robust system, thanks to the U.S. and so many partners to defend herself, but they are never on the offensive, they are always defending themselves. Let’s hope that that doesn’t happen to the Democratic platform.”

Gaffney then brought up the fact that the Palestinian Authority could be accepted as a member state under a new United Nations climate treaty and asked Ros-Lehtinen if American taxpayers could or should be affected by this. She responded:

“That is an issue with which, as you point out, I have been involved in for many years and I have filed legislation and amendments and have spoken on the floor repeatedly about the Palestinians not having a vote, not having a say in the United Nations. It is not a state. The first thing the Palestinians need to do is have a peace accord with Israel, just saying that Israel exists is a pretty long haul for them, they don’t even want to acknowledge Israel’s existence.”

She went on to say that under current law, any entity that admits Palestine cannot receive U.S. funding but that the Obama administration tries to get around this by saying they need flexibility.

Finally, Gaffney brought up the Iran Deal and the explosive revelation that the White House used false propaganda to sell it, an issue he’s been following closely for weeks now. He asked Ros-Lehtinen for her thoughts on the deal itself and the related developments:

“Well this is unbelievable and this should be one of the biggest scandals of the Obama administration but of course the media was getting paid, they were getting paid to sell this deal, as was brought out in that New York Times Magazine article that profiled Ben Rhodes who was one of the president’s top foreign policy aides. AP and everyone picked it up, but this Ploughshares Fund, what the mission was, to really sell this deal, they gave National Public Radio, NPR, one hundred thousand dollars last year to help report it… It’s been sold as… it’s just a bill of goods, to create that “echo chamber” that’s the very phrase that Ben Rhodes used, an echo chamber. Outside groups like Ploughshares helped carry out the message and this should be a bigger scandal than it is.”

She went on to point out that the Iran Deal is a threat to the security of Israel and the United States and said that the more we learn about the deal, the more concerned we should be.