Recent media reports had it that Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and I have reconciled over Iran when we were both in Israel.
Let me be clear. My dispute with Cory was never personal and was always about policy. There is no need for us to have any personal reconciliation, as there was never any personal animus. People who know and love each other for a quarter century and who have shared everything, like me and Cory — we have can never have real distance.
But there can be no reconciliation on Iran. Cory is dead wrong on Iran. He adds damaging insult to catastrophic injury when he defends his support of a deal that will forever mar his public legacy.
I was deeply disappointed to see that in recent media interviews he gave upon his return from Israel he was quoting unnamed Israeli security experts as saying that Iran deal has enhanced Israel’s security and stopped Iran from gaining nuclear weapons in the short term.
I am in Israel right now. Nothing could be further from the truth. My son is an IDF soldier stationed in the Golan Heights. Cory has known our son since his birth and his life is directly imperiled, God forbid, by the funding Cory voted to give Iran and, by extension, Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy terror army on Israel’s border.
Would Cory care to tell us which Israeli security experts he spoke to? There can be no anonymity on issues like these and Cory owes it to the people of New Jersey, of which I am a resident, to name exactly whom he is referring to.
Surely it was not Prime Minister Netanyahu, who continues to proclaim to the world that Iran remains the single greatest threat to Israel’s survival?
Cory could easily have used his recent visit to the Middle East as a stage from which to proclaim his condemnation of all Iranian pledges to annihilate Israel. Genocidal intent is a crime according to the 1948 UN Anti-Genocide Convention. Instead, Cory chose to remain silent the entire time he was in the Holy Land.
I assume Cory has read the report of the German intelligence services of two months ago, quoted throughout world media, that emphatically maintained that Iran continues to procure nuclear weapons technology and materials all over Europe.
Would Cory condone the Obama administration sending Iran $400 million in cash in January, which experts say is utterly unprecedented, and which will undoubtedly be funneled to terror groups like Hezbollah, Iran’s terror proxy army on Israel’s northern border? Who has ever heard of a Western government sending terrorists nearly half a billion dollars in cash? This is outrageous and disgusting.
And speaking of Hezbollah — how could Cory, on the one hand, tell us that on his trip he saw firsthand the terrible humanitarian disaster of Syrian refugees, yet on the other defend giving $150 billion to Iran, which is being used to prop up the genocidal government of Bashar Assad? Assad’s government, and its wholesale slaughter of the Syrian people, is what created this humanitarian disaster in the first place, along with nearly half a million Arab dead and millions of refugees. And Iran is a key ally keeping Assad in power. Cory could easily have condemned Iran’s support of Assad’s Arab genocide. Instead, he chose to remain silent.
Cory knows the truth. The Iran nuclear agreement achieved none of its objectives and is an unmitigated disaster. The deal emboldened Iran to take more American hostages; to continue as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror, as the State Department acknowledged; and to allow Iran to continue illegally to seek more nuclear materials, all while destabilizing the Middle East and brutalizing its own people.
The time has come for Cory to acknowledge, finally, that his political choice in backing a deal that leads directly to murdered victims worldwide, and his refusal to condemn Khameini’s promise of a second Holocaust, was a tragic mistake that will tarnish his political legacy forever.
That is, unless he simply owns up to the truth. He cannot, on the one hand, profess a commitment to Israel’s security, while on the other hand choosing to ignore Iran’s commitment to Israel’s annihilation.
Cory does not owe me an apology, as he did not offend our personal friendship. But he does owe the people of New Jersey an explanation as to why he continues to defend the Iran deal nightmare.
“America’s Rabbi,” Shmuley Boteach, whom the Washington Post calls “the most famous rabbi in America” is Executive Director of The World Values Network, which promotes universal values in politics and culture, and is the international best-selling author of 30 books, including his forthcoming, The Israel Warriors Handbook. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.