Is RFK Jr.'s loyalty to Israel a dealbreaker?

Who's beholden to whom?

Jun 18, 2023

Many people are highly enthusiastic about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s presidential campaign (including me!). Yet, has he precariously gone above and beyond the standard survival strategy of virtue-signaling one’s loyalty to Israel? (See compendium of 11 examples at end.)

To wit, Kevin Barrett asks some tantalizing questions concerning Bobby’s recent comments on Israel.

Why Is RFK Jr. Shilling for the People Who Killed His Father?
By Kevin Barrett, June 16, 2023
Is he playing 3D chess? Or suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?

In a June 12 interview with Kennedy, Glenn Greenwald grilled Kennedy about Israel and the Roger Waters deletion (starting at 35:00). Kennedy reveals an astonishing lack of knowledge and bias about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, claiming, for example, that “Israel is going to the West Bank and killing children — it’s never doing that deliberately, never, and nobody has ever said it is.”

My god! Bobby is well informed about Israel in the same way his son Conor was well informed about Ukraine. (Conor’s research influenced him to go fight as a mercenary in Ukraine.) He even uses the inflammatory terms “Judea” and “Samaria" for Israeli claimed territory. All to say, Kennedy’s Zionist version of reality is certifiably wrong and quite difficult to countenance.

Greenwald’s follow-up analysis of his RFK interview, however, points to a uniquely important factor. Unlike virtually all politicians, when Bobby is confronted with compelling data, he admits his errors and embraces factual truths.

RFK’s reversal on Russiagate is a prime example. In the interview with Greenwald (starting at 30:00) he related how he “just accepted the mainstream narrative.” The first time he began to doubt Russiagate was during a dinner with Oliver Stone and his son Sean. When Russiagate came up, Oliver “scoffed” dismissively. Kennedy said, “It put the first seed of doubt in my head,” and came to realize that Americans “were being propagandized to see the Russians as an existential enemy.” After the Durham Report came out, RFK now knows that Russiagate “was fabricated from whole cloth.”

Humbleness and intellectual honesty are rare and laudable traits. The following exchange also indicates Bobby’s willingness to be open to change, and thus why Greenwald came to the conclusion that RFK is “a very positive force.”

Greenwald: “Ukraine is a war we can’t afford. Why are we in the United States transferring billions of dollars of aid each year to a country, Israel, whose citizens in a lot of ways enjoy better standards of living than a lot of the ways American citizens live. What is your argument for why we should send so much money to Israel and not to Ukraine?”
Kennedy: “I think you raised some important points. Israel is much better able to take care of itself than in the past, and we need to look at all those things.”

A February 2023 Gallup poll shows a record-high sympathy for Palestinians (30%) versus a downward spiraling for Israel. Clearly, Bobby is out of step with America’s anti-Zionist trend, even as it comes from within his own Democratic party. Bobby’s bubble world view of Israel is rather similar to what his bubble world view on Russiagate was. At least he finally got Russiagate straight. He could use a new “seed of doubt” planted in his head on Israel.

Sooner rather than later, some persuasive anti-Zionists need to get his ear. On June 7, Max Blumenthal extended an invitation to Bobby to join him live on his Grayzone show to have an in-depth discussion on Israel. No doubt Blumenthal can be counted on to interrogate Kennedy’s Zionist opinions even tougher than Greenwald did. But to date, Bobby apparently has not accepted Max’s offer.

Kennedy recounts in various interviews how he took on Big Pharma when a valiant parent of a vaccine-injured child came to his home and insisted she was not leaving until he read a copious stack of documentation on vaccines. Similarly, someone needs to squat on Bobby’s doorstep once again, this time until he reads Alison Weir’s entire website, If Americans Knew.

Bobby has excited many of us with his breathtaking campaign promises and rays of Camelot hope that he’ll be the one to truly drain the swamp. Yet, this interview about RFK’s campaign strategies asks, when the fairy dust settles, can we really trust his intentions? Is it worth it to hang in there with the Kennedy campaign, hoping Bobby will get some sort of enlightened shift vis-à-vis Israel?

Is such a shift even possible for any politician these days? Cynthia McKinney exposed how back in the day all Congress members had to physically sign an oath of loyalty to Israel. Similar strictures, albeit invisibilized, are probably still solidly in place today. Kennedy’s highly promising candidacy is capable of gaining the backing of millions of Americans, but he needs to genuinely distance himself from his Zionist chauvinism — before his Green Party rival, Professor Cornell West, schools him on the campaign trail.

A brief compendium to date of RFK’s Israeli affinities

Since his announcement as a presidential candidate on April 19, 2023, we have seen glimmers of Kennedy’s unabashed embracement of Israel. Below are 11 examples.

1. Tablet’s RFK, Jr. Tapes – April 24

Bobby commenting on his father’s dispatches from a trip to Palestine in 1947: “[Bobby, Sr.] identified with those Palestinian Jews, as they were then known, the Israelis, very strongly.”
Bobby as a young boy commenting on the Israeli 1967 War: “And I just thought how this little, tiny sliver of a country was going to fight against these huge countries with tens of millions of people in them.”
Bobby asked his father about the ’67 War: “Is Israel going to get destroyed?” RFK, Sr. responded, “No, the Israelis are tough.”
Bobby’s takeaway: “For my father to use that, that was his supreme accolade. The word ‘tough’ was the highest thing that he could say about anybody. So I knew who he was rooting for.”

2. Bobby celebrated Israel’s birthday with a “Holocaust survivor” – April 25

3. RFK’s 2019 pilgrimage to Israel – April 28
Kennedy also reveals his bout with Trump Derangement Syndrome lite.

4. Bobby’s original tweet praising Roger Waters – May 27

5. Bobby’s comments on deleting his Roger Waters tweet – May 29
He ends up deleting both of his explanatory tweets as well.

6. RFK responds to questions at a press conference – June 1
He explains why he deleted the Roger Waters tweet and his position on Israel/Palestine.