After reading this pandering rant from Fox News Columnist and consummate Hillary worshipper, Susan “put-him-in-the-tank” Estrich, I think I am gonna be sick. This is shameless, journalistic quackery. This, from the same political hack who gave us the unforgettable tank moment in 1988 on the way to squandering a 17-point lead to Lee Atwater and George Bush Sr.

Estrich has written a book, “The Case for Hillary Clinton” and now is acting as an attack-dog mouthpiece for the Clinton Campaign. Despite the post-debate polling among South Carolina Democrats that showed Obama winning the debate, Estrich thinks Obama made “the biggest mistake of the debate” by slighting Israel in his answer to a question about America’s best friends in the world.

Here’s Estrich’s take on the unforgivable Obama gaffe (emphasis mine):

Obama waxed on about NATO and our European allies before looking east to Japan. I’m not a foreign policy expert, but I’ve been around debates for decades and it was clear that Obama didn’t get that this was the Israel question.

He didn’t get that people like me, voters and donors, were waiting to hear the word “Israel” in a way that Japanese Americans were not. Japan doesn’t live under constant threats; Israel does. Japanese Americans don’t worry about Japan’s survival in the way Jewish Americans worry about Israel.

Nevermind that “people like me” are already deeply entrenched with Hillary.

Clinton, of course—as the Senator from New York has to be—is completely Pro-Israeli (hence her Iraq war vote for which she cannot apologize.) If I were in the Clinton camp, I think I would leave Obama alone on the Israeli-Palestinian Issue. If you want to examine the root causes of 9/11 and all the rest (including the Iraqi debackle and the potential Iranian debacle to come) it is all about Israel. Other than gasbag neocons and christianist evangelicals (who see Armageddon in the works)—I believe that the majority of Americans are growing weary of protecting and funding Israel and supplying them with terrible weapons that they use whenever they feel like it, especially since they seem unwilling or unable to agree to even modest reversals of their land-grabbing gains in the quest for a Palestinian-Israeli peace accord.

Here’s more chip-on-the-shoulder nonsense from Estrich:

Even when prompted by Brian Williams, who followed up by pointing out that Obama had neglected to mention Israel, and reminded him of his comment that “no one had suffered more than the Palestinian people,” Obama still didn’t get it right.

If “getting it right” means bowing and scraping and kissing the Israeli ring, I think Barrack Obama showed great political courage here. Don’t think for one moment that he misread the question or failed to grasp the significance of it. Obama knew full well what it was about – this was an AIPAC litmus test question— and he simply refused to rise to the bait. Bully for him.

Then comes the really absurd part of her rant, in which Ms. Estrich attacks Senator Obama for saying that no one has suffered more than the Palestinians in the history of the whole sordid ordeal:

Sure, he said that Israel is an important ally, but his clarification of his “poor Palestinians” comment only left him further in the hole. His point, he emphasized, was that no one had suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failures in Palestinian leadership. That’s not exactly how I see it, or how many Jewish Americans see it. The Palestinians may be suffering more in the sense that their standard of living is lower, but whose fault is that?

Now there’s a darn good question.

…it is the Palestinians and not the Jews who have chosen these terrible leaders and remained loyal to them. Doesn’t that count for something?

Well, pleeeeze excuuuuuseuse me! Remind me again who elected Netanyahu and Sharon after Rabin was assassinated by an (ahem) Israeli wingnut godbag.

By the way: here, for the record, is a fair and balanced summary of the plight of the Palestinian People:

1. Four decades of occupation.

2. Millions of refugees who are not allowed to return home and millions who cannot get passports to leave.

3. Over 100 unrecognized villages in Israel where Arab’s have been given Israeli citizenship and pay taxes but receive no services; no electricity, no water, no medical, no schools, no respect, no human rights.

4. 4,170 Palestinian Homes have been demolished without reason or compensation since 2000

5. A concrete wall/electrified fence that does not follow the Green Line and has been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice and must come down, but continues to grab Palestinian land, water and divides families and prevents farmers from tending their land which terminates their rights to it.

6. 9,599 Palestinians prisoners are being held, many without charges and access to legal council, and many of these are woman and children.

7. 60+ new Jewish-only settlements have been built on confiscated Palestinian land between March 2001 and July 11, 2003.

8. The U.S. gives $15,139,178 per day to the Israeli government and military and has furnished billions in weapons of destruction.

Just to be clear: I am neither anti-Israeli nor pro-Palestinian. I am simply pro-peace. I loved Rabin and I have many Israeli friends. I am heartsick over the never-ending cycle of violence in the middle East. Nothing about this post shoud be construed as anti-semitic. It is about policy. When I refer to “all about Israel” above, I am only saying that I believe that the failure to come to some just resolution of this issue gives the terrorists all they need to justify their existence.