Surprise, Suprise; Jew-Hating James Baker Links Iraq War Solution to Israel

Former Sec. of State, James Baker, once infamously responded to a question about how Jewish Americans might react to State Department Middle East policy by replying "F--- the Jews. They don't vote for us anyway." A decade-and-a-half later, Sec. Baker appears to still be trying to do just that:

(CNSNews.com) - The Anti-Defamation League says the Iraq Study Group "got it wrong" when it said there's a link between the Arab-Israeli conflict and the war in Iraq.

"We reject the suggestion that there is a connection between finding a solution to the war in Iraq and direct involvement of the U.S. in solving the Arab-Israeli conflict," said Glen Lewy, ADL national chair, and Abraham Foxman, ADL national director.

"The goal of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict should stand on its own and has always been a key objective of U.S. foreign policy. It would be a terrible mistake to confuse the recent disintegration in Iraq with the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict," the ADL leaders said in a news release.

According to the Iraq Study Group's report, "The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability.

"There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria, and President Bush's June 2002 commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine," the report said.

The panel said the U.S. commitment to Middle East peace "must include direct talks" between Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and those Palestinians who accept Israel's right to exist...the United States does its ally Israel no favors in avoiding direct involvement to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict."

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UPDATE
See also Mark Steyn's take:

... According to The New York Sun, "An expert adviser to the Baker-Hamilton commission expects the 10-person panel to recommend that the Bush administration pressure Israel to make concessions in a gambit to entice Syria and Iran to a regional conference … "

On the face of it, this sounds an admirably hard-headed confirmation of James Baker's most celebrated soundbite on the Middle East "peace process": "F—k the Jews. They didn't vote for us anyway." His recommendations seem intended to f—k the Jews well and truly by making them the designated fall guys for Iraq. But hang on: if Israel could be forced into giving up the Golan Heights and other land (as some fantasists suggest) in order to persuade the Syrians and Iranians to ease up on killing coalition forces in Iraq, our enemies would have learned an important lesson: the best way to weaken Israel is to kill Americans. I'm all for Bakerite cynicism, but this would seem to f—k not just the Jews but the Americans, too.

It would, furthermore, be a particularly contemptible confirmation of a line I heard Bernard Lewis, our greatest Middle Eastern scholar, use the other day — that " America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend." To punish your friends as a means of rewarding your enemies for killing your forces would seem to be an almost ludicrously parodic illustration of that dictum. In the end, America would be punishing itself. The world would understand that Vietnam is not the exception but the rule...