Picking up on Eli Clifton's reporting, Ben Smith tells us a little more about the Emergency Committee for Israel, neocon svengali Bill Kristol's latest astroturf anti-Obama effort:
The Emergency Committee for Israel's leadership unites two major strands of support for the Jewish state: The hawkish, neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, many of whom are Jewish, and conservative Evangelical Christians who have become increasingly outspoken in their support for Israel. The new group's board includes Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol and Gary Bauer, the former Republican presidential candidate who leads the group American Values.
Just so we know where this group is really coming from, Gary Bauer opposes the creation of a Palestinian state. Here's what Bauer said in a speech several years ago:
God granted the Land of Israel to the Jewish people and there is an absolute ban on giving it away to another people.
Support for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza -- which Bauer regards as unacceptably "dividing" the Land of Israel -- became official U.S. policy under President George W. Bush. President Obama made it clear at the beginning of his presidency that he considered the creation of a Palestinian state and the resolution of the conflict to be in both the U.S. and Israeli national security interests. In his written testimony to Congress in March (pdf), Gen. David Petraeus affirmed this view, stating that "Insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace" is among the "root causes of instability [and] obstacles to security" in the region, and that progress on Middle East peace was imperative to achieving U.S. goals.
Gary Bauer has a different view, and thinks Middle East peacemaking is a waste of time. In addition to being far out of the American foreign policy/national security mainstream, Bauer's position is actually to the right even of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accepted a Palestinian state in his June 2009 Bar Ilan speech.
I contacted Bauer to see if it was still his position that the creation of a Palestinian state was a violation of The Lord's "absolute ban" against dividing the land. Bauer's press representative Kristi Hamrick said that Mr. Bauer "declines the opportunity to comment" on this.