Posted on 04/10/2015 3:40:10 PM PDT by SJackson
Former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, represents everything the Jewish left hates.
He’s a lifelong Republican, a former chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan and a former member of Reagan’s cabinet. Baker’s positions on hot button social and political issues are the exact opposite of the positions taken by liberal-minded Jewish Democrats.
Yet there was Baker delivering the keynote address at J Street’s national conference in late March, the most prominent left-wing Jewish group in America.
How is that possible?
The answer is that James Baker and J Street have found one issue on which they can agree, and they are both so obsessed with that issue that they are willing to set aside their many and extreme differences, in order to join forces in their common cause: blasting Israel.
Baker’s animus toward Israel goes all the way back to his days as a student at Princeton University, when his senior thesis (in 1952) argued that U.S. recognition of the newborn State of Israel was a mistake.
As secretary of state under George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1992, Baker regularly criticized and pressured Israel to make more concessions to the Arabs.
It was during this period that Baker became friends and tennis partners with a prominent left-wing Jewish pundit, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Friedman managed to overcome his revulsion at Baker’s Republican views because they shared an animus against Israel — and for both of them, denouncing Israel was paramount.
In his autobiography, Baker described how his tennis buddy Friedman would give him suggestions on how to pressure Israel. He credited Friedman for the notorious episode in which Baker publicly humiliated Israel by sarcastically announcing the White House phone number and declaring that the Israelis should call when they get serious about peace. For good reason did the editors of The New Republic, in 1992, characterize Friedman as “the New York Times’ State Department spokesman” and as part of “the James Baker Ministry of Information.”
That same year, Baker was quoted by the Israeli daily newspaper Maariv as saying “Jews remember the Holocaust, but they forget insults as soon as they smell cash,” and the Los Angeles Times reported that he had referred to pro-Israel members of Congress as “the little Knesset.”
The ultimate irony, though, is that when Baker, in 1992, uttered his infamous anti-Jewish vulgarity, “F– the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway,” he was referring to Jews such as his pal Tom Friedman.
Last week, Baker was heartily applauded by an auditorium full of Jews who “don’t vote for us anyway,” at the J Street annual convention.
The J Streeters who despise everything that Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan stood for, cheered for the man who was a regional chairman of the Nixon reelection campaign in 1972, and campaign manager for Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection race.
And so, the Republican ex-secretary of state who feels free to attack Israel because most Jews vote for the Democrats, has been embraced by some of those very Jewish Democrats he loathes. Animus towards Israel apparently trumps all other issues.
Obsessive resentment of the Jewish State makes for strange bedfellows.
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Meant to note that James “ Jews remember the Holocaust, but they forget insults as soon as they smell cash” Baker wasn’t really a life long Republican, he began life as a politically inactive Democrat who became friendly with Bush Sr. and became involved in his early campaigns.
James Baker is actually one very smart guy. He’s pretty low key, but he knows the game better than most.
He is smart. Smarter than most of the J Street folk.
Baker is a Jew hater and he is no Christian either.
Back in those days, Texas was one party democrat state with very few republicans.
Two of the more prominent republicans in Texas were transplants from the north east, GHW Bush and Bob Mosbacher. Whereas Baker was Bush's campaign manager, Mosbacher was Bush's campaign finance man.
BTW, previous Texas Guv Rick Perry didn't shift from Dem to GOP until 1990.
James Baker- The Man Who Made Washington Work
This 90 minute documentary covers Baker's career, including that time when he was trying to hold Israel's feet to the fire
Didn’t these guys give grain credits to Saddam (Israel’s enemy) in 1989 when they were in charge?
Don’t know, but that would have been a commercial transaction. We sell grain to everyone, one of the biggest exporters for years pre Obama. And it was a year after the Iran war ended. Probably not related to Israel, Bakers affinity to his Arab clients would make it likely.
How do the authors know Baker’s positions on “hot button social issues” are any different from the Jewish left’s? Most “moderate Republicans” share the same social positions as liberals.
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