Who’s the toughest on Iran and who has time for that anyway?
The Israel Project took to Capitol Hill toady to launch its petition against Iran’s nuclear bomb. The initial invitation to the event stated that “all presidential candidates have been invited to speak” but none of them showed up in person. Barack Obama sent a staffer with a statement and the rest just emailed in their own. Actually, not all of them. Republican front runners Rudy Giuliani and John McCain didn’t even send a note, but their views on Iran are probably well known by now. The statements are strikingly similar: we will not agree to a nuclear Iran, if elected we will make sure they don’t get a bomb, we support divestment from Iran. Naturally, some are tougher than others -Newt Gingrich went all the way with the Ahmadinejad = Hitler comparison, while John Edwards, for example, spoke about “carrots and sticks” when dealing with Tehran. Some politicians did make it personally to the event: Democrats Brad Sherman, Eliot Engel and Republicans Jon Porter and Mark Kirk. They are probably less busy these days than their campaigning colleagues.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
