Rep. Eliot Engel Salutes Israel For Shunning His Colleagues
(TPM Cafe) -- By M.J. Rosenberg --
Last week, the Israeli government took the unprecedented step of refusing to meet with a group of five Democratic House members who were visiting Israel with J Street, the pro-Israel, pro-peace group.
It was an incredibly stupid move. Israeli officials never refuse to meet with American legislators (1) because that is not how normal nations behave and (2) the American Congress provides Israel with more than $3 billion a year in foreign aid (more money, by far, than we give any country).
But the Netanyahu government is so confident that it is the dog wagging the American tail that it thought it could diss important House members with impunity...
But here is the creepy part. The Israeli decision to boycott the House members was defended by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and fellow Democrat.
In an incredible break with Congressional tradition - i.e, Congress stands as one in dealing with foreign insults to Congress, Engel said the Israelis were right to shun his colleagues.
Engel told the Jerusalem Post, "It's up to Israeli officials to decide who they will meet with, and who not to meet with."
The Post continues, "He pointed out that a number of the congressmen...vote against Israel on resolutions that generally carry massive support on the House floor." (LIE: They don't vote against Israel. They occasionally vote against AIPAC-drafted Palestinian-bashing resolutions that are mindlessly one-sided and contrary to US government positions}.
"If you look at some of the votes we had in the US Congress pertaining to Israel and the Middle East, there are some people on that [J Street] trip who the government would be unhappy with regarding their votes - and that would be understandable. They probably feel that if people are going to criticize them, they don't have to facilitate the criticism."...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:
Here are a few items from Engel's biography on Wikipedia relevant to his enthusiastic citizenship in the International Nation of Zion (my comments in bold parenthesis)
(On turning Jerusalem into an ethnocentric Jewish capital to the exclusion of Christianity and Islam):
--Engel is a supporter of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel
(On usurious globalizationism and exploitative neoliberal economics):
--Eliot Engel is a member of the New Democrat Coalition and the Democratic Leadership Council.
(On the Iraq war fraud on behalf of Israel, and backtracking once caught):
--Eliot Engel was a strong supporter of the military campaign against Iraq. On October 10, 2002, he was among the 81 House Democrats who voted in favor of authorizing the invasion of Iraq. As the war dragged on, his position changed. He now responds to questions about his support for the war by saying that had he known then what he now knows, he would have acted differently.
(On overriding the Second Amendment so statist-authoritarian INZ and its collaborators can attain a monopoly on force and undermine individual self-defense):
--Rep. Engel has received an "F" grade from the National Rifle Association
(On Israel-first agitprop):
--Engel has been a vocal supporter of Israel. In 2008, he was the lead Democrat on a resolution condemning Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations.[12] Shortly after entering Congress, he sponsored a resolution declaring Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel.[13] He also wrote the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 12, 2003.[14] This law authorized restrictions on American relations with Syria and penalties for its occupation of Lebanon and for its relationship with terrorist groups.
(On anti-Christian, Balkans warmongering, engineering a pretext for war, and opportunistically exploiting the Muslim cause to swipe at Serbian Christians and advance a "clash of civilizations" agenda):
--In 1996, the Washington Post wrote, “The Kosovo cause has been kept alive in Washington by a small group of congressmen led by Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.)...."While a member of the Subcommittee on Europe and Chair of the Congressional Albanian Issues Caucus, Engel fought ethnic cleansing and genocide in Kosovo in 1999 and voiced support in Congress for independence of the Republic of Kosovo. A street has been named after him in Peć and he was the first foreign dignitary to address the Kosovo parliament.
(On warlike, Armageddon-seeking, Dispensational Christian Zionism):
--Engel was criticized[29] for choosing to attend a July 2008 event hosted by the controversial pastor John Hagee, who has suggested that God sent Adolf Hitler to bring the Jews to Israel.[30]
(On the mindset that only the "little people" pay taxes)
--In March 2009, the AP reported that Engel had been taking an annual tax credit on his Maryland residence for at least ten years, despite the fact that the credit is reserved for people who declare Maryland their primary residence. Engel ran for reelection in the Bronx at least five times while claiming a primary residence credit in Maryland, during which time he received "thousands of dollars" in tax credits. Maryland officials revoked the tax credit.
(On shameless opportunism, careerism and relentless self-promotion)
--Engel can be seen shaking the hands with the president during televised State of the Union addresses.[37] Along with other Members of Congress, Engel shows up to the Capitol early in order to guarantee that he will get an aisle seat. Since 1989, Engel has managed to shake hands with the president at every address and be seen by his constituents on television.
"U.S. Representative" Eliot Engel: Rabid, smirking, racist Zionist. Shouldn't that be an Israeli flag in the background?
1 comment:
FYI.
List of hasbara agents:
http://www.infoisrael.net/authors.html
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