Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Cruz Blasts Obama for Opening Embassy in Havana Before Jerusalem

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Declared Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) contrasted President Barack Obama’s announcement of plans to open an embassy in Havana, Cuba, with the U.S. refusal to move its Israel embassy to Jerusalem.

“How sad is it that under the Obama administration the United States is going to have an embassy in Havana before we have an embassy in Jerusalem, that this administration will be friendlier to a Communist dictator who hates America and seeks to undermine our nation, than it is willing to stand with our close friend and ally, the nation of Israel,” Cruz said Wednesday, the day Obama announced the opening of a U.S. embassy in Havana.

Cruz was speaking on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, and his remarks were first reported by Breitbart.com. He later tweeted a link to the interview.

Cruz, whose father emigrated from Cuba, fiercely opposes Obama’s policy announced last year of opening up ties with President Raul Castro’s communist regime.

In his chat with Hewitt, Cruz linked Obama’s foreign policies to those of Obama’s first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nod.

Cruz said the opening of ties with Cuba is “an example — consistently under the Obama-Clinton foreign policy, we have abandoned our friends and allies, whether it is the U.K., whether it’s Canada, whether it’s Israel, and we have shown weakness and appeasement to our enemies.”

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.