US presidential candidates using Israel to raise funds: Analyst
The 2016 US presidential candidates are actively expressing their unconditional support for Israel in order to attract more campaign funding from the influential Zionist lobby in the US, a journalist and political commentator in Toronto says.
Brandon Martinez made the comments after Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz called on the United States to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) after the body voted to condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza last summer.
“From the vantage point of Ted Cruz and other senators, they have to be outspoken in their condemnation of the UN to show that they are clearly on Israeli side,” Martinez told Press TV on Saturday.
“They want to ingratiate themselves even further into the Israeli camp as part of an election ploy to achieve support financing from the Zionist lobby groups,” he added.
“So besides his Christian Zionism ideology which informs his pro-Israel fanaticism, it’s also a financial maneuver on his part,” Martinez said of Sen. Cruz.
The US was the only country that voted against a resolution passed Friday by the 47-member UN rights body, which condemned Israel for targeting civilians in the Gaza Strip during its 50-day military offensive against the impoverished enclave. Five countries abstained.
“It is time to stop ceding moral authority to the UNHRC and tell the truth about this hopelessly biased and anti-Semitic institution,” Sen. Cruz said in a statement posted on his website.
“The United States should stop legitimizing the UNHRC with our membership and withdraw now,” the senator added.
Cruz is competing with over a dozen other presidential candidates to get funding for his presidential campaign, which mostly comes from groups and business tycoons linked to the Israel lobby. Analysts say that is the basic reason candidates are making pro-Israel statements.
“Ted Cruz is a well known lackey of Israel, he has made a career effectively out of prioritizing the interests of Israel above that of his own country,” Martinez said. “This speaks to the power and influence of the AIPAC [pro-Israel] lobby in Washington.”
Israel’s war on Gaza, which started on July 8, 2014, killed 2,140 Palestinians, about a third of them children. Israeli losses amounted to 67 soldiers and six civilians.
AHT/HRJ
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