Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Wednesday blasted President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry following Kerry’s speech on the Middle East peace process.
In a statement, Cruz said the two would be remembered in history as “relentless enemies of Israel”.
"Like bitter clingers, President Obama and Secretary Kerry are spending every last minute of this administration wreaking havoc domestically and abroad. With their last breath in office, they have struck at Israel, through the United Nations and through today's disgraceful speech,” he charged.
"These acts are shameful. They are designed to secure a legacy, and indeed they have: History will record and the world will fully understand Obama and Kerry as relentless enemies of Israel. Their actions were designed to weaken and marginalize Israel, and to embolden its enemies,” added Cruz.
"Today's speech -- like Kerry's 2014 remarks likening Israel to an apartheid state -- will enflame rising anti-Semitism in Europe. It will encourage the mullahs who hate Israel and hate America. And it will facilitate 'law-fare,' growing legal assaults on Israel through transnational legal fora,” he warned.
"Kerry's speech drew a stunning moral equivalence between our great ally Israel and the Palestinian Authority, currently formed in a 'unity' government with the vicious terrorists of Hamas. Secretary Kerry declared the Hamas regime in Gaza ‘radical,’ in the same way he declared the duly-elected government of Israel ‘extreme.’ He declared vicious terrorism sponsored by Hamas equal to Israeli settlements in West Bank. And he equated Israel's celebration of its birth with the Palestinian description of this event as the ‘disaster.’ His speech attempted to lay out an historic and seismic shift towards the delegitimization of our ally, Israel, and the further empowerment of the Palestinian Authority.
"Kerry's central conclusion, that 'Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both' is an inanity that passes as profound only in Ivory Tower faculty lounges. There are roughly 50 majority-Muslim countries in the world. There is one -- only one -- Jewish state. And yet, for Kerry and Obama, that is too much. The Israeli Knesset has 17 elected Arab members. It has Muslim members and Christian members. In contrast, one searches in vain for Muslim countries that have elected Jewish representatives,” Cruz pointed out.
"America is an unshakable friend of Israel, and we are horrified at what has transpired this week,” he said, predicting that “Obama's and Kerry's shameful conduct will backfire. That it will be short-lived, and will inspire a bipartisan repudiation of their radical anti-Israel agenda.”
"I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle as well as the incoming administration to chart a new path forward based on America's national security interests and clear-eyed reality, not on the Obama administration's globalist agenda and wishful thinking," concluded Cruz.
The Texas Senator this week called on the United States to withhold funding to the United Nations until it reverses the anti-Israel resolution approved by the Security Council last Friday.
Earlier on Wednesday, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) accused Kerry of undermining America's moral standing in the world.
"The greatest immediate threat to the future of Israel is not a stalled peace process, or settlements, but the abandonment of the Jewish state by the current U.S. administration at a time when it needs America’s support more than ever," said Rubio.