The American President (1991)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon done in October 1991.

The American President who was squeezing Israel back then about Jerusalem and the "settlements" was NOT Barack Obama. It was George Herbert Bush.

As the NY Times had reported a month before this cartoon was published:

Bush's Dispute With Israel Upsets Many Leading Jews
By Fox Butterfield
September 16, 1991

"President Bush's demand that Congress delay debate on Israel's request for $10 billion in loan guarantees has deeply troubled many Jews who have been critical of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's Government, with most blaming Mr. Bush for the confrontation but with some also faulting Mr. Shamir.

"It seems to me the Administration has really shot itself in the foot," said Henry Siegman, the executive director of the American Jewish Congress. His organization has expressed serious reservations about Mr. Shamir's policy of building housing for Jewish settlers in the West Bank, territory Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.

But Mr. Siegman said he was "stunned" when Mr. Bush last week linked the loan guarantees, intended to help build housing for 350,000 Soviet Jewish immigrants, to a proposed Middle East peace conference in October. Mr. Bush has asked Congress not to debate the issue until January to limit arguments about Jewish settlements in Israeli-occupied territories from which Palestinians hope to create a homeland.

"This was out of the blue," Mr. Siegman said, and represented "a sudden shift in signals by the Administration." - more