Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who counts supporters of Israel among his biggest source of campaign cash, said that the Jewish state deserved to share the blame with U.S. President Donald Trump for the Iran war.
“One clear issue that New Jerseyans are paying for is that Israel and the United States decided to go to war with Iran,’’ the two-term Democrat said during a debate Thursday with Republican challenger Justin Murphy, a former local official.
“This is going to go down in history as one of the most colossally stupid things the president has ever done,” Booker said.
He said the Iranian regime is more extreme than its predecessors, American soldiers have been killed, billions of dollars that could have been spent to address domestic problems paid for this war instead, the conflict pushed up gasoline prices and the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed.
“He and Israel rushed into this war with no conceivable end game, and it’s gotten worse,’’ Booker said of Trump. “This president is a foreign policy disaster.”
Murphy defended the decision to go to war and said that the Iranian regime needed to be blocked from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.
He said Trump should finish the job.
“Mr. President, get your cowboy hat on and go out there and kick some a** and get this done the right way,” he said during the debate in Lawrenceville, N.J., sponsored by the New Jersey Globe and Rider University.
Booker raised $1.3 million for his re-election from pro-Israel donors, according to the research group OpenSecrets. His biggest donor was AIPAC, which contributed or raised $818,206. Booker said he has stopped taking money from AIPAC, part of his decision not to accept contributions from any political action committee.
AIPAC lists Booker among its list of “pro-Israel incumbent members of Congress.” It doesn’t allow users to donate via that page, as it does with many other members of Congress.
He broke with AIPAC in 2015 when he voted for the Iran nuclear deal championed by then U.S. President Barack Obama.
Murphy called Israel “a great ally of ours” and said he supported its right to exist. But when asked how he differed from Trump, he cited the president’s failure to call out “settlers” in Judea and Samaria, who he said have been attacking Palestinians living there.
“Some Israeli settlers who are absolutely a deviation from the Israeli citizen, who I believe wants peace, are attacking and burning homes,” Murphy said. “I would like the president to be a little harder on Israel to make sure that that stops, because it’s the entire process to get that region stabilized.”
