Seth Lipsky of the New York Sun has weighed in on the craven apology offered Tuesday by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to President Barack Obama over Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s Monday speech.
Trump had said:
With President Obama in his final year — yea!
(LAUGHTER)
(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)
(LAUGHTER)
He may be the worst thing to ever happen to Israel, believe me, believe me. And you know it and you know it better than anybody.
AIPAC’s leaders were mortified that Trump would criticize Obama, despite the fact that he himself had been criticized by Hillary Clinton from the same podium only hours before. On Tuesday, it offered an apology: “We are deeply disappointed that so many people applauded a sentiment that we neither agree with nor condone, said AIPAC president Lillion Pinkus.
Dave Weigel of the Washington Post called the apology “unprecedented,” noting that “Trump was hardly the first speaker to criticize a sitting president.”
Lipsky goes further:
Forgive me, but the right word for AIPAC’s apology is “chickens - - -.” And it’s not just because Hillary Clinton’s address, with her jibes at Mr. Trump and other Republicans, was the most partisan speech at AIPAC.
It’s also because AIPAC has always been a stage for putting things into sharp relief. Of course President Obama isn’t literally the worst thing that’s ever happened to Israel (we Jews have had more than our portion of woe).
It’s hard, though, to think of a presidency as disappointing to Israel as Mr. Obama’s has been. Who, after all, was that “senior Obama administration official” who used “chickensh - - -” to describe Benjamin Netanyahu?
Read the rest here.