interview<\/a> with the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. Sharansky at the time was a Prisoner of Zion.<\/p>\nMcCain left the Navy in 1981 and went to work for his second wife\u2019s father, who ran an Arizona beer distributorship. He won a race for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982 and for the Senate in 1986, and since has been re-elected to the Senate.<\/p>\n
Two years later, Lieberman joined him in that body and they soon formed a fast friendship. They traveled together countless times to Israel, and in the mid-2000s, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., joined them on their overseas trips, to Israel and everywhere else where McCain determined the United States should make its strength known to allies and enemies. They were often photographed together \u2013 they called themselves \u201cthe Three Caballeros\u201d \u2013 each grinning, wearing the senator-abroad uniform of a blazer and an open collar button-down shirt.<\/p>\n
They seemed to have had a blast together, and McCain went deep blue at an Israeli Embassy reception in 2012 that honored Lieberman as he retired from the Senate. He described the alternating sensations of alarm and boredom that was the job of being a companion to an Orthodox Jew.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy in every f***ing kosher menu do we have to have salmon?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And then there was the time McCain fell asleep on a plane and woke up next to Lieberman davening in a tallit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hear this mumbling and I look and there\u2019s this guy wearing a shawl \u2014 I thought maybe I\u2019d died,\u201d the Arizonan said.<\/p>\n
The friendship even earned a gibe from Jon Stewart, the late-night comedian who was both a friend and nemesis of McCain. Someone ought to tell the senator, he joked on the \u201cThe Daily Show,\u201d that there are plenty of Jews in Israel, he doesn\u2019t have to bring his own.<\/p>\n
Lieberman by 2008 was no longer a Democrat but was still caucusing with the party. That didn\u2019t stop him from endorsing his friend, and McCain thought seriously of repaying the compliment by naming Lieberman his running mate. The Republican establishment mightily resisted, saying Lieberman\u2019s backing for reproductive rights would drive away conservatives, and McCain at the last minute chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was sound advice that I could reason for myself,\u201d he wrote this year in \u201cThe Restless Wave,\u201d his final book, describing the GOP insistence that Lieberman was a bad bet. \u201cBut my gut told me to ignore it and I wish I had.\u201d<\/p>\n
It will never be known if Palin \u2013 who seemed callow and unprepared \u2013 cost McCain the presidency, but she appeared to have cost him Jewish votes. In polling before the pick, Obama was at 60 percent, low for a community that tends to vote for Democrats in the 70s. On Election Day, Obama garnered at least 74 percent of the Jewish vote.<\/p>\n
McCain in that election and subsequently was a vigorous advocate of using all means of pressure to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to look you in the eye and tell you that the United States of America can never allow a second Holocaust,\u201d he told Israel\u2019s Channel 2 during the campaign.<\/p>\n
McCain repeatedly hammered Obama for his expressed willingness to meet with Iran\u2019s leaders and later on led the charge against the 2015 deal spearheaded by Obama that swapped sanctions relief for a partial rollback of Iran\u2019s nuclear program. (Trump despised the deal and pulled out of it this year.)<\/p>\n
McCain\u2019s willingness to buck his party was perhaps most pronounced in his outspokenness on torture, and that was an issue where he found common cause with liberal Jews. He had a long meeting with Rabbis for Human Rights (the group now known as T\u2019ruah) in 2005 and it left an impression. The group briefed McCain on Israel\u2019s High Court ban on torture in 1999 \u2013 and it subsequently became a talking point for him.<\/p>\n
He also joined with Jewish former Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., in passing an act informally named for them that limited campaign giving. His party leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., led one of the legal challenges to the law that culminated in its gutting by the Supreme Court in 2010.<\/p>\n
McCain had difficulty cultivating evangelical Christians \u2013 their support for George W. Bush in 2000 was a factor that kept McCain from winning the GOP nomination that year \u2013 but in 2008 he secured the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee, who founded Christians United for Israel. McCain dumped Hagee, however, after it was revealed that Hagee had espoused a theology that cast the Holocaust as a means of ingathering the Jews in Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them,\u201d McCain said at the time. \u201cI did not know of them before Reverend Hagee\u2019s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
His credo was forgiveness \u2013 seeking it from others and proffering it. Appearing with Obama at a 2008 faith forum, McCain said his Christian faith \u201cmeans I\u2019m saved and forgiven. Our faith encompasses not just America but the world.\u201d In the 1980s and 1990s, he joined then-Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., another Vietnam War veteran, in leading the normalization of relations with Vietnam.<\/p>\n
He was magnanimous to those who opposed the war at home as well. An anti-war activist, David Ifshin, traveled to Hanoi to speak out against the war, and his words were piped into McCain\u2019s cell. Years later Ifshin, who had become a lawyer with AIPAC and came to appreciate a robust U.S. military posture, sought out McCain for his forgiveness.<\/p>\n
They became fast friends.<\/p>\n
Ifshin died of cancer in 1996, and McCain spoke at his funeral.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat David taught me and, I suspect, what he taught a great many people,\u201d McCain said, \u201cwas how narrow are the differences that separate us in a society united in its regard for justice, in a country in love with liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n
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