-Nathan, even when you're wrong, you usually make sense. This dispatch -comes from way around the bend. -Let's see who else is an outlier? Sen Charles Schumer?
Come on, New York is the heart of the pro-Israel bias in the Democratic Party. Hillary became more pro-Israel than Bill (or herself earlier) when she started running for Senator in the state. One reason Gore developed such a pro-Israel policy was building a Presidential campaign in 1988 around winning the nomination based on winning New York and Florida. Remember Ed Koch leading Gore around by the hand? Jackson (who yes did represent many tireless party activists) faced off against Gore on policy in Israel and actually managed to get far more votes than Gore that year. Gore probably never could have won a nomination without being an incumbent VP and Lieberman never even had to run, so picking them as emblematic even of Democratic primary politics is not very accurate.
>As for Gephart as "a strong pro-Israel voice"?
I didn't say that Dems are anti-Israel; in fact, I said the opposite. Gephardt is considered a strong Israel supporter within the Dems but is hardly a fanatic and in fact took heat when in 1999 he tried to appoint Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles, to serve on the National Commission on Terrorism, a 10-member group charged with reviewing national policy on terrorism. Gephardt was not particularly courageous in defending his nominee when hard-core Jewish groups attacked him because MPAC had expressed sympathy for the despair of Palestianians who occasionally turned to violence, but the fact that he nominated him at all puts him outside the pro-Likud camp.
And during his 1988 Presidential campaign, he criticized the Reagan administration's failures to actively promote peace in the Middle East- "''During the last seven years, the Reagan Administration has relegated Middle East peace to a low priority" and endorsed a multi-country conference on achieving peace along with direct talks on establishing a Palestinian administration for the occupied territories.
And Minority Whip David Bonior, who represents strongly Arab-American Michigan, has been a strong activist against anti-arab discrimination and has close ties to pro-Palestinian organizers. He has been a leader against using secret evidence to jail suspected terrorists without proof. He even had a pro-Palestinian intern in his office kicked out of the White House by the Secret Service on suspicion of TOO close association with radical Palestinian groups.
As early as 1982, Bonior went on a small five-member delegation to meet with Arafat to help him pressure the Reagan administration to establish direct talks with the PLO.
So that's not terrible positions for the two top leaders of the Dems in the House.
I will also note that back in 1988, thirty Senators wrote a public letter during the first intifada criticizing the Shamir government and advocating Israel trading land for peace. Almost all of the signers were Democrats. The list notably included present Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (and did not inlcude Gore, as an outlier among the Dems who did sign):
Lowell P. Weicker Jr., a Connecticut Republican; George J. Mitchell, a Maine Democrat; Brock Adams, a Washington Democrat; Thomas A. Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat; J. Bennett Johnston, a Louisiana Democrat; Donald W. Riegle Jr., a Michigan Democrat; Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat; Warren B. Rudman, a New Hampshire Republican; Bob Kasten, a Wisconsin Republican; J. James Exon, a Nebraska Democrat; Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat; John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat; Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican; William S. Cohen, a Maine Republican, Alan K. Simpson, a Wyoming Republican; Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat; Dennis DeConcini, an Arizona Democrat; Kent Conrad, a Democrat of North Dakota; John Glenn, an Ohio Democrat; Timothy E. Wirth, a Colorado Democrat, Wendell H. Ford, a Kentucky Democrat, Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, and Daniel K. Inouye, a Democrat of Hawaii.