Bauer Calls Clinton's AIPAC Remarks "Blind to the Enemies of Real Peace," Affirms "Jerusalem is a Capital City, Not a Settlement"

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Mar 22, 2010, 12:30 ET

WASHINGTON, March 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer on Monday said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks to the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on how to achieve peace in the Middle East "again failed because of a failure to understand who the real enemies of peace are."

The president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families has been a long-time champion of a strong relationship between the U.S. and Israel, the only democratic nation in the Middle East. Bauer was traveling in Israel and meeting with high officials as Vice President Biden and other Obama Administration officials stirred up the current tension in the U.S.-Israeli relationship simply because Israel was proceeding with long-standing building plans in their own capital.

Bauer made the following comments:

"Today the United States and Israel stand together against a common enemy, radical Islamofascists who wish to see our nations destroyed. It takes a real commitment to blindness to miss seeing who is the threat to peace in the Middle East. Hillary Clinton continued the Obama administration's call for Israel to refrain from housing its people in its own capital city, but a housing project is not a road block to peace.

"I stand with AIPAC and affirm that Jerusalem is not a settlement; it's the legitimate capital of a nation. To say that it undermines 'mutual trust' in the region for a sovereign nation to house its people while ignoring murderous actions of jihadists against Israel misses the true situation entirely. Israel faces daily threats from committed enemies and sees on the horizon the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran. The weapons of war aimed at Israel are the obstacles to peace, not fabric of peaceful civilian life.

"Peace in the region would be possible tomorrow if Islamofascists ended their dream of a second Holocaust. The Obama Administration is not acting in good faith if it pretends otherwise."

SOURCE American Values