Ambassador Lew Does Not Live Up to the Standards of the US and Israel, Says Sen. Tom Cotton

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Monday that President Joe Biden’s nominee for ambassador to Israel Jack Lew is the “wrong” person for the job and that the country deserves a better choice.

He added that the Senate should not confirm the nomination.

“The Senate should not confirm a man who has lied to it through both omission and overt dishonesty. The Senate should likewise refuse to confirm a man who has acted as the de facto banker and business agent of the ayatollahs to serve as America’s representative in Israel,” Cotton said in a statement Monday. “Both the United States and Israel need a U.S. ambassador in Jerusalem that is worthy of their confidence. Both nations deserve better than Lew.

“President Biden should withdraw Lew’s nomination and select an honest champion of the American-Israeli alliance in his place.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 12-9 to advance Lew’s nomination to a floor vote in the chamber, despite Republican senators on the committee expressing concerns about his role in former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal when he served as Treasury secretary in 2015, CNN reported.

“We need this thing filled. The problem I have is it needs to be filled with the right person,” Politico reported the committee’s top Republican, GOP Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, saying during Lew’s Oct. 18 Senate confirmation hearing. “The only thing worse than having it empty would be having the wrong person there, and I have some issues in that regard.”

Cotton said in his statement that Lew was not popular in Israel due to his support of the agreement.

“Lew called the agreement with Iran, which delivered over $100 billion in sanctions relief to Israel’s greatest enemy, a ‘strong deal’ and said that ‘it will make our country safer, it will make our allies safer, and it will make the world safer’,” Cotton said in the statement Monday. “Our allies in Israel disagreed. In fact, Prime Minister Netanyahu called the agreement ‘a very bad deal.'”

An Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University poll found that 73% of Jewish Israelis believed that the deal posed an “existential threat” to their nation.

“Attendees booed and jeered Lew when he spoke in defense of the agreement at the 2015 annual conference of the Jerusalem Post — one of Israel’s largest newspaper publications.”

According to CNN, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., could work to get the vote on the floor for Lew “quickly.”

“In my conversations with Sen. Schumer, he was wanting to know how quickly I could get the nomination out of committee,” Committee Chair Ben Cardin told the news outlet.