G.O.P. and Tea Party Gains Are Mixed Blessing for Israel

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Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON — When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel came to the United States recently for another round of tense talks with the Obama administration, he got a decidedly warmer welcome from one of the rising Republican stars on Capitol Hill, Representative Eric Cantor, the incoming majority leader of the House. But while Mr. Cantor and other newly empowered Republicans are eager to promote themselves as Israel’s staunchest defenders in Washington, the reconfigured American political landscape is a more complex and unpredictable backdrop for Middle East peacemaking.

Scores of Tea Party-backed candidates are entering Congress, many of whom favor isolationist policies and are determined to cut American foreign aid, regardless of its destination. Rand Paul, the newly elected Tea Party-backed senator from Kentucky, bluntly told the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, an influential pro-Israel lobbying group, that they were going to disagree about the need for foreign aid and suggested that they move on to other topics, according to a person briefed on the meeting.

“One of the first things Congressman Cantor can do is to make sure that his colleagues vote for aid to Israel,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who also met with Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Schumer and others worry that support for Israel in Congress, long a bipartisan article of faith, could become politicized in a way that will end up harming Israel’s interests. In the recent election, the administration’s Middle East policy became a partisan issue, seized on by several Republicans who pointed out that President Obama had tended to take a tougher line against Israel.

Allen West, a black Republican, focused on it with great success in a heavily Jewish coastal district of Florida. Representative John A. Boehner, the Ohio Republican who is the House speaker-designate, sent out fund-raising literature aimed at Jewish voters, criticizing the administration for its pressuring of Israel on issues like settlements. “That was the first time I had seen Israel used in a partisan political way,” said Representative Gary L. Ackerman, a New York Democrat and outgoing chairman of the House foreign affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/world/middleeast/26diplo.html