Dubya is back for 2016 (sort of) – and that’s lucky for Israel, and lucky for Jeb

Jeb Bush has said his brother George, Zionism’s fastest friend in the White House, is his most influential adviser on U.S.-Israel policy.

Ha’aretz

News that Jeb Bush’s most influential adviser on Israel is his brother, George W. Bush, certainly puts a spring in my step. I’ve been arguing for years that in terms of relations with the Jewish state, the 43rd president was one of the best we’ve ever had — and the only one prepared to cite Israel as the redemption of God’s promise to the Jews.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who is maneuvering for a presidential campaign, surprised a group of high-powered Manhattan financiers last week by naming W. as his “most influential counselor on U.S.-Israel policy,” according to The Washington Post. “If you want to know who I listen to for advice, it’s him,” the Post quoted him as saying.

The reason this is news is that the Bush name is supposedly Jeb’s biggest problem. I’ve never believed that, any more than the idea that Hillary Clinton’s biggest problem is Bill Clinton. But the idea persists, along with the notion that the Bush family has a Jewish problem going back to the late U.S. Senator Prescott Bush, Jeb and George W.’s grandfather.

Worries about Prescott Bush arose from his directorship of a New York financial house, Union Banking Corp., where, as Slate characterized it in a 2002 article, “rich Germans who supported the Nazis stashed millions in personal wealth.”  Its assets were frozen under the Trading With the Enemy Act in 1941.

Those concerns were in check when Jeb and W.’s father, George H.W. Bush, was vice president under Ronald Reagan, who had arisen from Hollywood and the anti-communist labor movement. But as president, George H.W. Bush feuded with Israel over loan guarantees and barred the Jewish state from the coalition that expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

All the more dramatic was the emergence of George W. as Zionism’s fastest friend in the White House. Oh, there were some irksome moments, as when W. took umbrage at Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s warning that Israel would not play the part the Czechs were asked to play at Munich. But they understood that the war that erupted on 9/11 was bigger than both of them.

The biggest marker of the George W. Bush view of Israel was his speech to the 17th Knesset. W. delivered the speech in May 2008, the last year of his presidency [WATCH below]. He quoted David Ben-Gurion to the effect that it was the “natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate,” and said what followed was “more than the establishment of a new country. It was the redemption of an ancient promise given to Abraham, Moses, and David.”

Bush suggested that the ties between America and Israel were “deeper than any treaty.” He spoke of the “bonds of the book.” He told the story of William Bradford, who, stepping off the Mayflower, quoted Jeremiah: “Come let us declare in Zion the word of God.” Bush noted that America’s founders gave their towns names like Bethlehem and New Canaan.

The president went on to decry Hamas and warn against trying to “explain their words away.” He cited the folly of U.S. Senator William Borah, who famously once said: “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.” Bush went on to deride “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

W.’s speech, spoken as it was from the heart by a Bible-believing Christian, infuriated Bush’s adversaries. The campaign of then-Senator Barack Obama, getting into high gear for what would be a successful run for the White House, called it an “unprecedented political attack on foreign soil.” Egypt’s Al Ahram complained the speech was “Torah-inspired.”

Only a year later, a newly elected President Obama would go to Cairo to try to undo what the left saw as the damage of W.’s Knesset speech. He would eventually yank from Iraq the last American GIs and prematurely declare the war over, leaving to the Islamic State the territory his predecessor had won with one of the most courageous moves in American military history, the Iraq War surge.

No wonder Jeb declared that he would have made the same decision on Iraq that W. had made (and asserted that Hillary, who voted for the war, would have done the same). And no wonder he’s calling W. his most influential counselor on Israel.

The remarks about W.’s role as adviser were delivered at the Metropolitan Club, one of the most discreet venues in New York. But now the word is out. Lucky for Jeb.