Of all people running for the nation’s highest office in 2016, Ted Cruz is singularly the biggest advocate for Israel.
The ideologue from Texas via Canada was so bold in his support for the Jewish nation that he allowed himself to be booed offstage at an event in 2014. As the crowd of Middle Eastern Christians worked themselves into a froth, the Senator told the fuming audience, “If you don’t stand with Israel and the Jews, I don’t stand with you.”
You can’t get much more direct than that. Zero equivocation.
But Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote last week that Cruz’s “New York Values” statement was a play on words in which the candidate really meant, “Jewish Values.”
Huh?
Talk about a stretch of the imagination.
Milbank’s attack hanged on a single word used by Cruz, “chutzpah.”
At an event in New Hampshire, Cruz, the Republican Iowa caucuses winner, was asked about campaign money he and his wife borrowed from Goldman Sachs. Cruz, asserting that Trump had “upward of $480 million of loans from giant Wall Street banks,” said: “For him to make this attack, to use a New York term, it’s the height of chutzpah.” Cruz, pausing for laughter after the phrase “New York term,” exaggerated the guttural “ch” to more laughter and applause.
So Milbank accuses Ted Cruz of substituting “New York” for “Jewish.”
While New York has the largest population of Jews in the United States, even if Cruz were making that correlation, there’s no anti-Semitism hidden in his statements.
Milbank didn’t stop there at making a fool of himself.
The writer had the audacity to criticize Cruz on his use “insinuation” to attack his opponents.
While true, Dana hypocritically employs the same tactic in his writing.
