Surely something the vitriolic Right-wing will forget to mention when savaging the reputation of this great leader.

:)

I had never heard that story. Thank you for sharing that with us. It really moved me.

Ted Kennedy was one of the few senators who rarely, if ever, yielded to the pressure to join the Israel-is-always-right caucus.

From his first year in the Senate, 1962, until his last votes, Kennedy was a stalwart Israel supporter. It is likely in this, too, he was living the values of his older brother. “Israel will endure and flourish,” John F. Kennedy once said. “It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.”

According to one tally, Ted Kennedy voted 100 percent in concert with positions taken by Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Tom Dine, who served as Aipac’s executive director from 1980-93, was a defense and foreign policy advisor to Kennedy.

In the run-up to his tough 1994 Senate campaign against Mitt Romney, Kennedy accumulated some $45,000 from pro-Israel political action committees over the years, according to former Aipac legislative director Doug Bloomfield, “and presumably a lot more from individual pro-Israel donors, considering his long record of support for U.S. taxpayer aid for Israel.”

The relationship was mutually beneficial—either a testament to Kennedy’s bedrock values or his astute political instincts. Take the Carter race.
In the 1980 presidential race, writes Jeffrey S. Helmreich, “polls indicated that Carter would beat Kennedy in the New York Democratic primary by a margin of 54 to 28 percent. But on March 1, Carter’s UN Ambassador, Donald F. McHenry, voted for a viciously anti-Israel resolution in the UN Security Council condemning Israeli settlement activity in Jerusalem. Three weeks later, Kennedy beat Carter in New York by 59 percent to 41 percent.”

In a statement following Kennedy’s death, Israeli Prime Miniiter Benjamin Netanyahu said, “(Senator) Kennedy has been a friend for 30 years, a great American patriot, a great champion of a better world, a great friend of Israel. He will be sorely missed.”

It is also worth noting that in a major policy address on the eve of the second Iraq War, Kennedy challenged the wisdom of attacking Iraq when Iran’s nuclear weapons program posed a greater risk to the world and to Israel.
“Iran has had closer ties to terrorism than Iraq,” he said on Sept, 26, 2002. “Iran has a nuclear weapons development program, and it already has a missile that can reach Israel.”
But such support alone was not enough to win the hearts of Jews who opposed Kennedy’s stalwart liberal positions, or those who remained suspicious his character.

“Rarely in America has a more unworthy person been accorded such deep respect as is regularly heaped upon Kennedy,” wrote Dr. Mendy Granchow, past president of the Orthodox Union, yesterday.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/bloggish/item/ted_kennedy_israel_and_the_jews_20090826/

From an Arab commenter on Helena Cobban's Syria vs Maliki et al thread, another memory about the youthful Ted Kennedy relayed to the author in 1987:

A special commitment to Senator Ted Kennedy

Under the shock of the bad news - the death of the world figure Senator Ted Kennedy - I must apologise to Helena for breaking the rules to her blog and say something about him may be a new information to the most readers.

In 1987 I attended a conference presented by an Algerian ex-diplomat named M'hamed Yazid was held at KASR ATHAKAFA ( CULURAL CASTLE )in Algiers.

He said about this great pesonality when he was a student in the mid-1950's in France and visited Algeria during his holidays and saw the the Agerian people how are suffering from french colony. When he returned back to the USA he explained the Algerian national cause to his brother sentor John Kennedy at that time and when the latter became a President he gave a great support to the Algerian independence.

I still remember M'hamed yazid made an appeal to the Algerian leaders to invite him and acknowloge his contribution to the Algerian national cause.Unfortunately, the Algeiran naive dipolomacy turned its back to the people who loved this country.
for tis reason, I feel sad and upset, sad because the world lost a great personatity and upset because my government didn't make her duty to this kind of personalities.

Hafid

Posted by Abdelhafid Dib at August 26, 2009 05:27 PM

Support for Israel has become almost a necessity in American politics and I'm sure if you check the record closely, Teddy was guilty of it (albeit to a lesser degree) like most politicians. But, I do get your point that he did not wear it on his sleeve, or visably trade on the association like so many politicians.