During Tuesday morning's edition of the Fox & Friends program, conservative radio host Laura Ingraham hammered the lack of political fallout over secretary of state John Kerry's remarks that Israel could become an “apartheid” state if that nation doesn't adopt “a two-state solution” to achieve peace with their Palestinian neighbors.
“He's kind of apologized,” Ingraham noted before stating that on the other hand, the Left “rushes to demonize people who are either Republican or conservative who misspeak.” [See video below.]
“I don't want to do what they do,” she stated. “I'm more concerned about the fact that we have a foreign policy that is essentially nonexistent today. We've accomplished nothing, really, in terms of foreign policy.”
Since Kerry acknowledged that he "misspoke," “I don't want to make too much of it,” the radio host said, “but the word apartheid is very charged, like the word holocaust, and apartheid means economic and social and political disenfranchisement and discrimination, institutionalized discrimination.”
The interview began when co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked the guest if Kerry should resign because he made such a controversial remark.
“He's done the walk back,” Ingraham responded and quoted the secretary of state as saying: “As soon as it came out of my mouth, I regretted having made the comment.”
Nevertheless, Kerry is “not going to resign, I don't believe, over one comment,” she asserted. However, “I don't think to brand Israel an apartheid state has been very helpful, to say the least. He's going to be cleaning this up for some time.”
In addition, she asserted:
I think we have to remember that this comment doesn't exist in a vacuum. Especially at the beginning of the administration, there was a lot of concern from Jewish Americans and all of us who support Israel that the president really wasn't continuing the relationship with Israel as it had been continued and conducted for years.
“And so, there was a lot of concern, a lot of pushback” that caused a great deal of anxiety early on, Ingraham said, “and so this kind of confirms what a lot of us believe about the president's approach to Israel and Middle East peace.”
“It's always Israel's fault,” she continued, despite the fact that the nation “is our only ally that's a real democracy in the Middle East.”
Co-host Steve Doocy said he agrees with Ingraham's viewpoint on Kerry “because people in his own party are steamed,” like Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California. “She was on the 'Twitter machine' and posted that 'any linkage between Israel and apartheid is nonsensical and ridiculous.'”
“Bad politics, too,” Ingraham added.
Several other Democrats have criticized Kerry's remark, such as Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, the ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee, who spoke out on Twitter: “Inflammatory rhetoric comparing Israel’s democracy to repugnant apartheid policy is irresponsible, inaccurate and counterproductive.”
Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska also spoke out against Kerry’s comments:
Secretary Kerry knows as well as anyone that negotiating lasting peace in this region of the world is difficult, but it’s not productive to express his frustration in this way,
This remark also implies Israel should ignore the pact between [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas and the Hamas. Last time I checked, the U.S. didn’t negotiate with terrorist organizations, and we shouldn’t expect the Israeli government to either.
As you might expect, several Republicans in Congress have expressed their dismay regarding the secretary of state's comment. Among them are House minority leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and fellow senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who went so far as to call for Kerry's resignation.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, Doocy stated that “Jewish leaders are absolutely fuming in Israel and here in the United States.”
Ingraham then asserted:
America's weaker; everybody knows it. China's on the move; Russia's on the move. In the Middle East, all these dreams that we had of an Arab spring have turned out to instead crush minorities, crush Christians.
They still have the textbooks in Muslim countries that say Jews are pigs and are defiling the world, so that's all continuing under the Obama administration.
“I think that's so true because you can't really debate a policy if there's no one to debate it with,” noted co-host Brian Kilmeade. “We've taken our hands off the wheel,” and no one knows what's going to happen next.
Even though Kerry's "apartheid" comment has sparked some controversy, it's extremely unlikely that the secretary of state will step down. If Eric Holder, the attorney general who created the Fast and Furious gun-running scheme, is still at his post, Kerry has a lot of "misspeaking" to do before he moves on.
