JOHN McCAIN- A TRUE FRIEND OF ISRAEL?
Letter from Ruth Matar (Women in Green) Jerusalem
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Dear Friends,
US Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Tuesday, March 18, in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post: "The success of Hamas and Hizbullah in the region is not only a danger for Israel, but also a threat to United States national interests."
"If Hamas/Hizbullah succeeds here, they are going to succeed everywhere, not only in the Middle East, but everywhere. Israel isn't the only enemy," Arizona Senator McCain said, in the only interview he gave to the Israeli media during his visit here.
"They are dedicated to the extinction of everything that the US, Israel and the West believe and stand for. So America does have an interest in what happens here, far above and beyond our alliance with the State of Israel." Mr. McCain further said that while he would never tell Israel not to speak to Hamas, he was personally against it.
"Someone is going to have to answer me the question of how you are going to negotiate with an organization that is dedicated to your extinction," McCain said in a lounge in Jerusalem's David Citadel Hotel, as senators Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina listened.
McCain, who has been here on numerous occasions since his first visit in 1979, was careful about dispensing advice or coming across as dictating policy to the Israeli government.
"I really think that we should understand that the US and Israel are partners. Israel is not a client of the United States," he said. "If you are partners, then you don't dictate what you think the terms of the survival of a nation should be."
Asked whether Israel was using the right tactics in trying to quell the rocket fire on Sderot and the western Negev, McCain praised defense minister Ehud Barak, terming him "one of the great military people he has met"- and added, "I can't give you a good answer as to how you respond to these rocket attacks."
But, he then said dryly, "I can tell you that I believe that if rocket attacks came across the border of the United States of America, that the American people would probably demand pretty vigorous actions in response. I think I know my constituency in the state of Arizona, and they would be pretty exercised if rockets came across our southern border."
(The foregoing are excerpts from an article in the Jerusalem Post, March 18, 2008.) Reading these statements of John McCain, I became a strong admirer of his.
At this point I want to introduce myself to those who are not familiar with me and my weekly email articles, which are sent to an extensive email list. I am now an elderly lady. I am a holocaust survivor, who at the age of nine was able to escape from Hitler's death machine, together with my older brother and sister, on a Kinder Transport to Sweden. My parents were subsequently able to cross the border to Italy illegally, on foot and in the dark. We were reunited in the United States after the war, where we became naturalized American citizens. (In 1954 I married an American Jewish lawyer, who had enlisted in the army at the beginning of World War II to fight the Nazis, but was instead sent to fight the Japanese.)
We were not able to escape Austria as a family, as the doors of every country in the world were closed to the Jewish people, even the doors of Palestine, which had been designated as the British Mandate of Palestine.
Britain's Double Standard
To Britain's great shame, it allowed Arabs to enter the British Mandate of Palestine with ease, but tried their very best to keep the Jews out.
In the words of Anthony Eden in 1943: "If we must have preferences, let me murmur in your ear that I prefer Arabs to Jews." Anthony Eden was Britain's Foreign Secretary for three periods between 1935 and 1955, including WWII. He subsequently served as Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957.
Because of Britain's double standard, many European Jews perished in the Holocaust.
There is a very special reason why I will do my utmost to convince my family and friends in the US to vote for John McCain in the upcoming election, as well as bringing out the Absentee Vote for him of Americans living in Israel. John McCain visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, on his recent trip to Israel. He is reported to have written in the Guest Book, "NEVER AGAIN." And I do think he is sincere.
With John McCain as president of the United States, I believe that we Jews can count on him to protect Israel's sovereignty and not to divide the Holy land. As it is written in the book of Genesis, in the Bible, G-d gave this Land to the Jewish People as an everlasting inheritance.
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With Blessings and Love for Israel,
Ruth Matar
For your information, I include an article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
British Mandate of Palestine
The British Mandate for Palestine, sometimes referred to as the Mandate of Palestine, was a League of Nations Mandate created after the First World War when the Ottoman Empire was split by the Treaty of S vres.
At the 1920 San Remo conference of the Allied Supreme Council, at which the Mandates were granted, the precise boundaries of all
territories, including that of the British Mandate of Palestine, were left unspecified, to "be determined by the Principal Allied Powers" and were not completely finalized until four years later. However, it was clear that the boundary of Britain's mandate for Palestine was to extend eastward to the western boundary of its mandate for Mesopotamia. As drafted at the San Remo Conference, the British Mandate of Palestine comprised territory in modern-day Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1921, the
Transjordan (later Jordan) was split off to be administered separately, a move formalized by the addition of a September 1922 clause to the charter governing the Mandate for Palestine.
The objective of the League of Nations Mandate system was to administer parts of the then defunct Ottoman Empire, which had been in control of the Middle East since the 16th century, "until such time as they are able to stand alone."
The borders of the Mandate for Palestine extended from the Mediterranean Sea to the west, the British Mandate of Mesopotamia to the east, the French Mandate of Lebanon to the north, the French Mandate of Syria to the northeast, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Kingdom of Egypt to the southeast and southwest respectively.
The British Mandate over Palestine came to an end on 15 May 1948, heralding the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the establishment of Israel in 1948.
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Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green)
POB 7352, Jerusalem 91072, Israel
Tel: 972-2-624-9887 Fax: 972-2-624-5380
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