JOHN MCCAIN, ISRAEL ADVOCATE AND FOREIGN POLICY HAWK, DIES AT 81

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McCain was a powerful political figure and a strong advocate of Israel. The vacancy created by his death narrowed the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate to 50 seats in the 100-member upper chamber, with Democrats controlling 49 seats. 

Alternatively affable and cantankerous, McCain had been in the public eye since the 1960s, when as a naval aviator he was shot down during the Vietnam War and tortured by his North Vietnamese communist captors during 5-1/2 years as a prisoner.

He supported Israel's military action in Gaza against Hamas in 2014, aggressively opposed the nuclear deal brokered between six world powers and Iran in 2015 and passionately criticized the Obama administration's decision not to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity in 2016.