Where did the “education” take place?
http://danielgordis.org/2010/03/26/obama-intifada/
Will Barack Obama Ignite the Third Intifada?
Posted by Daniel Gordis in Featured Articles on March 26, 2010 | 37 responses
As I was departing the United States following a brief visit last week, the news being broadcast in the airport was preoccupied with Prime Minister Binyamin’s Netanyahu’s recent and apparently inadvertent snub of Vice President Joe Biden. Some 11 hours later, when I’d landed in Tel Aviv and was listening to the radio in the taxi on the way to Jerusalem, the news was of rioting in Jerusalem, the numbers of police officers injured, and the number of protesters detained during Hamas’s “Day of Rage.” On the American news, Hillary Clinton was calling for more than an apology, demanding “concrete steps” towards peace on Israel’s part. And in Israel, the fluent-Hebrew-speaking Arab protester interviewed on the radio was calling for armed resistance to Israel’s “assault on Jerusalem,” insisting that the time for a third intifada had now arrived.
The radical difference between the broadcasts is an apt metaphor for the wholly different ways in which the current crisis in Israeli-American relations is perceived on the two sides of the ocean. The Americans are quite right to be incensed at the way Biden was treated. Whether Netanyahu was sandbagged by Interior Minister Eli Yishai, or whether this was simply another example of Israeli bureaucratic incompetence is not yet entirely clear. But it should never have happened.
Having said that, however, it is also clear that in the context of a generally positive relationship, Israel’s insult to Biden would have been unfortunate, but it would have blown over almost immediately. The snub has had such massive repercussions because the relationship between the American and Israeli administrations is frayed, and wholly devoid of trust. The important question is why that is the case.
WHILE ISRAEL has obviously made some serious gaffes since Obama entered office, the real cause for this nadir in Washington-Jerusalem relations is the fact that Barack Obama seems to have little comprehension of the region on which he seeks to impose peace. The president’s ignorance of the world in which he is operating is apparent on at least three levels. He seems unaware of how profoundly troubled Israelis are by his indiscriminate use of the word “settlement,” he appears to have little comprehension of the history of Palestinian recalcitrance, and he has apparently learned little from decades of American involvement in the Middle East peace process.
First, there is the issue of the word “settlements.” To the Israeli ear, anyone who would use the same noun for both a small city with tens of thousands of inhabitants and for a tiny hilltop outpost consisting of a trailer and a portable generator simply does not understand the terrain. Gilo, to Israelis, is not a settlement. It is a huge neighborhood of Jerusalem, a part of the capital city. When Obama called Gilo a settlement after Israel announced new housing units there in November, Israelis drew the conclusion that the president of the United States is wholly out of his element.
Similarly, Obama’s demands for an absolute freeze on settlement construction strike Israelis as either foolish or unfair. Why, they ask, did all construction have to cease? Israelis who had planned to add a bedroom to their home for recently married children, who had already poured a foundation and ripped out the back wall of their home, were now told that nothing could proceed. When the president, who does not seem to know a city from an outpost, insists that houses remain open to the elements during the cold Israeli winter because of his desire to appease the very Palestinians who have never been serious about peace efforts, he does not win friends.
Nor, Israelis have noted, did Obama demand any similarly concrete concessions from the Palestinians or their puppet-president. That, too, has served Obama poorly in this country. And despite all this, Israelis believe the world has forgotten, Netanyahu acceded to Obama’s demands for a freeze, at no small political cost.
Thus, when the Americans decided to make the undeniably ill-timed announcement of the Ramat Shlomo housing plans into a cause célèbre, Israelis were hard-pressed to feel contrite about anything beyond the personal hurt caused to Biden. Ramat Shlomo is an enormous neighborhood that is already home to some 20,000 people, and which is situated between the even larger neighborhoods of Ramot and Sanhedria. Ramat Shlomo is Jerusalem, period. Building there may be wise or unwise for a whole array of reasons, but for the Americans to seize on this as a “settlement construction” issue only further confirmed Israeli suspicions that Obama couldn’t locate the neighborhood on a map.
THE SECOND major element that Obama appears not to understand is that the Palestinians’ current refusal to conduct face-to-face negotiations has a long history; their recalcitrance has nothing at all to do with the settlements. The settlements, like the refugee problem (on which Israel will never compromise), and the division of Jerusalem (where some accommodation will almost certainly be forced on Israel), will be addressed when the Israelis and Palestinians sit down for face-to-face negotiations.
But Abbas has agreed only to mediated talks because he is unwilling to countenance the concessions that direct talks might ultimately require of him. The Palestinians have balked at every attempt to sign a substantive agreement with Israel. There remains virtually no Israeli political Left, not because of the Israeli Right, but because Yasser Arafat unleashed the Second Intifada when Ehud Barak called his bluff and offered him just about everything he could have expected, proving beyond any doubt that the Palestinian leadership had no interest in “land for peace.”
For the Obama administration to suggest that the Palestinians cannot negotiate now because of settlement construction strikes Israelis as either hopelessly naïve, or worse, fundamentally hostile to the Jewish state.
And finally, despite his appreciable intellectual capacities, Barack Obama seems to have no appreciation of what America can and cannot do in the Middle East. He believes so deeply in the power of his own rhetoric that he imagines that he can evoke the passions of Grant Park on Election Day, or the Washington Mall on Inauguration Day, in a Muslim world that has disdain for the very democratic values that brought him to power. This is hubris at its most dangerous. Obama’s Cairo speech was rhetorically brilliant, but the president has been snubbed. Iran has yet to grasp Obama’s outstretched hand, and instead, proceeds apace in its quest for a nuclear weapon. The Palestinians have not budged. Yet Obama continues to believe that his eloquence will win the day.
Does Obama really not understand that this conflict has a long and consistent history? The Arabs rejected the UN Partition Plan in 1947, and refused a treaty at the end of Israel’s War of Independence in 1949. After their defeat in June 1967, they gathered in Khartoum and declared “no peace, no recognition and no negotiations.” Arafat said “no” at Camp David in 2000, and Abbas continues in that tradition. Why the American administration cannot or will not acknowledge that is one of the great wonders of this most recent train wreck.
WITH HIS laser focus on the settlements, Obama is ignoring the fact that Abbas wouldn’t negotiate even if not a single settlement existed. In so doing, Obama has not only not moved the process forward, but he has afforded Abbas a refuge from responsibility, and he has given those who would like to ignite a third intifada an empty but symbolically powerful excuse for doing just that. A third intifada remains unlikely at present (though, it’s worth noting, the IAF attacked Gaza targets this week and the IDF killed a Palestinian teenager during a scuffle – precisely the sort of innocuous events that could one day be seen as the first events of the third intifada), but should it happen, it will be, first and foremost, the product of Washington’s naïveté.
Obama would be well-served to recognize that the history of this region is clear. Peace emerges when the two primary sides do the work themselves, with the United States entering late in the process to iron out stubborn details. Sadat went to Jerusalem without American urging, and though Jimmy Carter ultimately brought the two sides together to conclude the deal, the bulk of the work had been done by Sadat and Begin long before Carter entered the picture. The Nobel Committee, which once exercised much more subtle judgment, essentially acknowledged that fact by having Sadat and Begin split the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize, without including Carter.
The same was true with Rabin and Hussein, who worked on the Israeli-Jordanian peace deal. Clinton orchestrated the ceremony; but the principals had done most of the work without him.
And history suggests that only Israeli right-wingers can forge a deal. Israelis do not trust the Left to be security-conscious, and a left-wing government always has a right-wing flank blocking it. Obama may bristle at Netanyahu’s hawkish rhetoric, but the more Obama weakens this prime minister, the less likely a deal will become. The US cannot wish democracy on Iraq, or peace on the Middle East. There will be a settlement of this conflict when the Palestinians are ready, not when Barack Obama decides to impose one.
SO, WHERE do we go from here? To begin to pull out of the present nose-dive, each of the parties will need to shift gears.
The Palestinians have to decide if they will take risks for peace, and if they can elect a president who is more than a figurehead. Last week’s “Day of Rage,” it should be noted, was called by Hamas – yet it unfolded not in Hamas’ Gaza, but in Fatah’s Jerusalem. Fatah needs a genuine leader, perhaps someone like Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who is now saying that the Palestinians should first build the trappings of statehood, and only then declare independence down the road. It is no surprise that Shimon Peres recently compared Fayyad to David Ben-Gurion, the creator of the modern State of Israel.
The Israelis need to learn to play in the major leagues. When the American vice president visits, you need to have your act together. If Israeli leaders continue to act as if they run a banana republic, they will deservedly be so treated. But much more significantly, Netanyahu needs to apprise Israelis of his vision. Does he favor a two-state solution? What are his plans for Jerusalem? For the settlements? Let him tell us, and then we can decide. If we approve, he’ll stay in office. And if we don’t, he’ll be gone. But we deserve to know what our prime minister has in mind.
In some respects, though, Barack Obama has the hardest job, at least in the short term. When he took office, there was no love lost between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and Gaza was still smoldering from the recently concluded Operation Cast Lead. But there was reasonable quiet on the West Bank and in Jerusalem, and a renewed Intifada was nowhere on our radar screen. Obama’s blunderings have now restored the region’s previous tinderbox qualities.
The president needs to back down from his relentless and fruitless focus on settlements, and concentrate more on what he doesn’t yet know than on the power of his rhetoric. Should another intifada erupt, it will have had its seeds in a Washington more interested in the magic of its words than in the painful lessons of a century of history.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Obama declared diplomatic war on Israel
Has the Obama Administration, Against U.S. Interests, Declared Diplomatic War on Israel?
By Barry Rubin*
March 29, 2010
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/03/has-the-obama-administration
Has the Obama Administration, against U.S. interests, declared diplomatic war on Israel?
Up to now my view has been that the U.S. government didn't want a crisis but merely sought to get indirect negotiations going between Israel and Palestinians in order to look good.
Even assuming this limited goal, the technique was to keep getting concessions from Israel without asking the PA to do or give anything has been foolish, but at least it was a generally rational strategy.
But now it has become reasonable to ask whether the Obama White House is running amuck on Israel, whether it is pushing friction so far out of proportion that it is starting to seem a vendetta based on hostility and ideology. And if that's true, there is little Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or any Israeli leader can do to fix the problem.
A partial explanation of such behavior can be called, to borrow a phrase from the health law debate, a "single-payer option" as its Middle East strategy. That is, the administration seems to envision Israel paying for everything: supposedly to get the Palestinian Authority (PA) to talks, do away with any Islamist desire to carry out terrorism or revolution, keep Iraq quiet, make Afghanistan stable, and solve just about any other global problem.
What makes this U.S. tactic even more absurd is doing so at the very moment when it is coddling Syria and losing the battle for anything but the most minimal sanctions on Iran.
During his visit to Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to defuse the tension. His partners in government, we should never forget, are Defense Minister Ehud Barak, leader of the Labour Party, and President Shimon Peres, who has done more to promote Middle East peace than any other living Israeli leader.
But according to reliable sources, Obama went out of his way to be personally hostile, treating Netanyahu like some colonial minion who could be ordered around.
It is not entirely clear what demands the White House has made on Israel. Those most often mentioned are the release of more Palestinian prisoners, the permanent end of construction in the West Bank, and the permanent end to construction in parts of Jerusalem over the pre-1967 border.
Palestinian prisoners: It is ironic, given U.S. statements that Israel must "prove" its commitment to peace, that there have been so many prisoner releases in the past. Thus, Washington is not giving Israel credit for these. Moreover, many of those arrested have committed terrorism against Israeli civilians in the past and may well do so in future. Finally, releasing prisoners will not bring any gratitude from the PA or increased willingness to negotiate. If such a release is forced, the PA will merely assume that it doesn't matter if Palestinians attrack or kill Israelis because Washington will secure the release of those captured in future without the PA having to do anything.
West Bank and Jerusalem Construction: Only five months ago, the U.S. government agreed to a temporary halt to construction and Israel's government agreed. If this did not prove Israel's commitment to peace--and the White House broke the deal--why should Israel assume that it will get any credit for this step either? What is its incentive for such a big concession? Such construction should give the PA an incentive to make a deal faster. But, again, if this goal is achieved by U.S. pressure, why shouldn't the PA presume that all settlements will be removed in future by a similar mechanism without its having to make full peace and any concessions?
I won't take space here to restate all the arguments regarding Israel's claims to areas of Jerusalem under Jordanian rule before 1967. Note that President Clinton, in the Camp David and Clinton plan proposals in 2000, supported Israeli rule over much--though definitely not all--of east Jerusalem.
Why should the administration believe that it can press Israel to make big concessions, a: with no PA concessions; b. with its U.S. ally showing itself so unreliable that it is unlikely to credit Israel with concessions it does make or to keep agreements based on Israeli concessions; and c. at a time when the U.S. government is not workin very hard to stop Iran's nuclear weapons campaign?
The one answer the administration gives is so factually inaccurate as to call into question--if I may coin a phrase--its analytical sanity.
Judging from the evidence, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's AIPAC speech, the administration thinks it can force Israel's government to give in because it knows better what Israelis want than do Netanyahu, Barak, and Peres.
Actually, a poll by the highly respected Smith Research company for the Jerusalem Post, found that only 9 percent of Israeli Jews considered the administration pro-Israel, while 48 percent said it was more pro-Palestinian. To understand these figures, you have to know that most Israelis are very reluctant to say anything critical of the United States, out of genuine respect, concern not to damage relations, and speaking on the basis of their hopes.
So does the administration want to resolve this issue or to break Israel's willpower? Is it going to keep piling on demands in hope of giving the PA so much that it will agree to talk about getting itself even more unilateral Israeli concessions? Is the goal to overthrow Netanyahu-which isn't going to happen-or turn him into a servant who will follow orders in future-which also isn't going to happen?
Doesn't this U.S. government understand that if it proves itself hostile that will destroy any incentive Israel has to enter negotiations with Obama as the mediator? If he's this much acting solely based on PA interests now, does any Israeli government want to make him the arbitor of the country's future, deciding on its borders, security guarantees, and other existential issues? Of course not.
By the same token, can't he comprehend that he is giving the PA every incentive to keep raising the price, especially since it doesn't want to talk any way?
Is there no real sense--probably not--that if this administration undermines Israel's trust in Washington it will push the whole country further to the right. If the U.S. government politely asks to stop building in east Jerusalem in exchange for some tangible benefit and for a limited time, lots of Israelis would be willing to agree. But if this happens in a framework of enmity and threat, with the "reward" being no benefit and even more concessions to follow, even doves will grow sharp beaks.
It seems as if the Obama Administration has chosen just one country in the world to try to pressure and intimidate. And it has picked the worst possible target in this respect, both because of how Israelis think and also given very strong domestic U.S. support for Israel (especially strong in Congress).
Won't it see that if it bashes Israel while ignoring the PA's commemoration of a major square in honor of a terrorist who murdered a score of Israeli civilians, with Clinton even claiming this was done by Hamas and not the PA? And as the administration betrays Israel's main priority-failing to put serious pressure on Iran to stop building nuclear weapons-why should Israel want to do big favors and take big risks for this president?
Finally, since this administration has already unilaterally abrogated two major U.S. promises-the previous president's recognition that settlement blocs could be absorbed by Israel as part of a peace agreement, and the Obama administration's own pledge to let Israel build in east Jerusalem if it stopped on the West Bank-why should it put its faith in some new set of promises?
So the Obama Administration will have to decide, and do so in the coming days.
Does it want to try to get some limited concessions from Israel to use as capital in trying to get talks started, using these to brag--futilely, of course--to Arabs and Muslims how they should be nicer to the administration in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Or does it want to live up to the negative stereotypes held by its worst enemies while simultaneously committing political suicide and destroying U.S. credibility in the Middle East. We will know the answer pretty soon.
*Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books, go to http://www.gloria-center.org.
By Barry Rubin*
March 29, 2010
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/03/has-the-obama-administration
Has the Obama Administration, against U.S. interests, declared diplomatic war on Israel?
Up to now my view has been that the U.S. government didn't want a crisis but merely sought to get indirect negotiations going between Israel and Palestinians in order to look good.
Even assuming this limited goal, the technique was to keep getting concessions from Israel without asking the PA to do or give anything has been foolish, but at least it was a generally rational strategy.
But now it has become reasonable to ask whether the Obama White House is running amuck on Israel, whether it is pushing friction so far out of proportion that it is starting to seem a vendetta based on hostility and ideology. And if that's true, there is little Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or any Israeli leader can do to fix the problem.
A partial explanation of such behavior can be called, to borrow a phrase from the health law debate, a "single-payer option" as its Middle East strategy. That is, the administration seems to envision Israel paying for everything: supposedly to get the Palestinian Authority (PA) to talks, do away with any Islamist desire to carry out terrorism or revolution, keep Iraq quiet, make Afghanistan stable, and solve just about any other global problem.
What makes this U.S. tactic even more absurd is doing so at the very moment when it is coddling Syria and losing the battle for anything but the most minimal sanctions on Iran.
During his visit to Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to defuse the tension. His partners in government, we should never forget, are Defense Minister Ehud Barak, leader of the Labour Party, and President Shimon Peres, who has done more to promote Middle East peace than any other living Israeli leader.
But according to reliable sources, Obama went out of his way to be personally hostile, treating Netanyahu like some colonial minion who could be ordered around.
It is not entirely clear what demands the White House has made on Israel. Those most often mentioned are the release of more Palestinian prisoners, the permanent end of construction in the West Bank, and the permanent end to construction in parts of Jerusalem over the pre-1967 border.
Palestinian prisoners: It is ironic, given U.S. statements that Israel must "prove" its commitment to peace, that there have been so many prisoner releases in the past. Thus, Washington is not giving Israel credit for these. Moreover, many of those arrested have committed terrorism against Israeli civilians in the past and may well do so in future. Finally, releasing prisoners will not bring any gratitude from the PA or increased willingness to negotiate. If such a release is forced, the PA will merely assume that it doesn't matter if Palestinians attrack or kill Israelis because Washington will secure the release of those captured in future without the PA having to do anything.
West Bank and Jerusalem Construction: Only five months ago, the U.S. government agreed to a temporary halt to construction and Israel's government agreed. If this did not prove Israel's commitment to peace--and the White House broke the deal--why should Israel assume that it will get any credit for this step either? What is its incentive for such a big concession? Such construction should give the PA an incentive to make a deal faster. But, again, if this goal is achieved by U.S. pressure, why shouldn't the PA presume that all settlements will be removed in future by a similar mechanism without its having to make full peace and any concessions?
I won't take space here to restate all the arguments regarding Israel's claims to areas of Jerusalem under Jordanian rule before 1967. Note that President Clinton, in the Camp David and Clinton plan proposals in 2000, supported Israeli rule over much--though definitely not all--of east Jerusalem.
Why should the administration believe that it can press Israel to make big concessions, a: with no PA concessions; b. with its U.S. ally showing itself so unreliable that it is unlikely to credit Israel with concessions it does make or to keep agreements based on Israeli concessions; and c. at a time when the U.S. government is not workin very hard to stop Iran's nuclear weapons campaign?
The one answer the administration gives is so factually inaccurate as to call into question--if I may coin a phrase--its analytical sanity.
Judging from the evidence, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's AIPAC speech, the administration thinks it can force Israel's government to give in because it knows better what Israelis want than do Netanyahu, Barak, and Peres.
Actually, a poll by the highly respected Smith Research company for the Jerusalem Post, found that only 9 percent of Israeli Jews considered the administration pro-Israel, while 48 percent said it was more pro-Palestinian. To understand these figures, you have to know that most Israelis are very reluctant to say anything critical of the United States, out of genuine respect, concern not to damage relations, and speaking on the basis of their hopes.
So does the administration want to resolve this issue or to break Israel's willpower? Is it going to keep piling on demands in hope of giving the PA so much that it will agree to talk about getting itself even more unilateral Israeli concessions? Is the goal to overthrow Netanyahu-which isn't going to happen-or turn him into a servant who will follow orders in future-which also isn't going to happen?
Doesn't this U.S. government understand that if it proves itself hostile that will destroy any incentive Israel has to enter negotiations with Obama as the mediator? If he's this much acting solely based on PA interests now, does any Israeli government want to make him the arbitor of the country's future, deciding on its borders, security guarantees, and other existential issues? Of course not.
By the same token, can't he comprehend that he is giving the PA every incentive to keep raising the price, especially since it doesn't want to talk any way?
Is there no real sense--probably not--that if this administration undermines Israel's trust in Washington it will push the whole country further to the right. If the U.S. government politely asks to stop building in east Jerusalem in exchange for some tangible benefit and for a limited time, lots of Israelis would be willing to agree. But if this happens in a framework of enmity and threat, with the "reward" being no benefit and even more concessions to follow, even doves will grow sharp beaks.
It seems as if the Obama Administration has chosen just one country in the world to try to pressure and intimidate. And it has picked the worst possible target in this respect, both because of how Israelis think and also given very strong domestic U.S. support for Israel (especially strong in Congress).
Won't it see that if it bashes Israel while ignoring the PA's commemoration of a major square in honor of a terrorist who murdered a score of Israeli civilians, with Clinton even claiming this was done by Hamas and not the PA? And as the administration betrays Israel's main priority-failing to put serious pressure on Iran to stop building nuclear weapons-why should Israel want to do big favors and take big risks for this president?
Finally, since this administration has already unilaterally abrogated two major U.S. promises-the previous president's recognition that settlement blocs could be absorbed by Israel as part of a peace agreement, and the Obama administration's own pledge to let Israel build in east Jerusalem if it stopped on the West Bank-why should it put its faith in some new set of promises?
So the Obama Administration will have to decide, and do so in the coming days.
Does it want to try to get some limited concessions from Israel to use as capital in trying to get talks started, using these to brag--futilely, of course--to Arabs and Muslims how they should be nicer to the administration in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Or does it want to live up to the negative stereotypes held by its worst enemies while simultaneously committing political suicide and destroying U.S. credibility in the Middle East. We will know the answer pretty soon.
*Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books, go to http://www.gloria-center.org.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Obama's war against Israel
Barack Hussein Obama II?s War Against Israel
Posted By Pamela Geller On March 25, 2010 @ 4:43 pm In Featured Story, Hol=
ocaust, Israel, Obama | 225 Comments
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was in the U.S. and met with Bar=
ack Obama in the White House, but you won?t find any photos of Netanyahu=
with Obama on the wire services. There aren?t any. Obama wouldn?t allow=
it. Politico reported:
But the meetings were shrouded in unusual secrecy, in part because U.S. of=
ficials, who just ten days earlier called the surprise announcement of new=
housing in East Jerusalem an ?insult? and an ?affront,? made sure to rewa=
rd Netanyahu with a series of small snubs: There were no photographs relea=
sed from the meeting, and no briefing for the press.
He bows to the Saudi king, he shakes hands warmly with his ?amigo? Chavez,=
but he won?t be seen with the leader of the only democracy in the Middle=
East, and our only reliable ally there.
And this comes after he has put unprecedented strain on the U.S./Israel al=
liance by pressuring Israel for allowing Jews to build homes on Jewish lan=
d, and blaming Israel for the conflict with the Palestinians Muslims.
Obama is not a passive, weak or naive player in the Muslim/Jewish conflict=
. He was wet-nursed on Jew-hatred. He grew up in a Muslim country and stud=
ied the Koran. He knows what is prescribed for the Jews in Islam. He knows=
that the Koran says that the Jews are the Muslims? worst enemies (5:82)=
and that ?ignominy shall be their portion wheresoever they are found? (3:=
112).
He knows that Islamic tradition records Muhammad saying:
The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jew=
s and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves beh=
ind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the serv=
ant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gh=
arqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.
He must know all this, and yet has never renounced it. On the contrary, he=
embraces it, calling upon us to ?respect? Islam.
I am staggered by the speed with which Obama has sought to undermine the=
Jewish people. But knowing what I know of him after my three years of inv=
estigation for the book I wrote with Robert Spencer, The Post-American Pre=
sidency: The Obama Administration?s War on America [1], I expected nothing=
different. In the summer of 2008, I trekked to Florida to warn the alter=
cockers who were seduced by the idea of Obama, but to no avail: my voice=
and the voices of those like me are kept neatly tucked away in the blog=
box.
But now here we are. Jews may then have tried to avoid Obama?s anti-Semiti=
sm, but they cannot now avoid the consequences of avoiding Obama?s anti-Se=
mitism. He has unleashed an evil in this world the extent of which we are=
only now beginning to see. He has made the world safe for haters and kill=
ers. The post-World War II peace was no accident; it was a direct result=
of American hegemony. But now he is following the European lead and unrav=
eling it. Europe learned the wrong lessons from the war and the Holocaust.=
The lesson that Europe decided to take from Auschwitz was that everything=
was caused by nationalism. European leaders decided that therefore what=
they really needed was a European Union that would obviate their need for=
nationalism and prevent another Auschwitz.
They took all the wrong lessons from World War II and continue to apply th=
em, while ignoring the only lesson that?s really relevant from World War=
II, which is that you have to choose good and defend good, and fight with=
the intention of defeating evil. We have to be able and willing to make=
moral distinctions and stand up for the good and fight evil ? and that is=
something that both the Europeans and Obama refuse to do.
Nationalism isn?t evil. British nationalism hasn?t been evil. French natio=
nalism isn?t evil. Polish nationalism isn?t evil. American nationalism was=
n?t evil and has never been evil. Contrary to Obama?s actions, American ex=
ceptionalism [2] isn?t evil.
But what did the Jews learn from the Holocaust? What does ?never again? me=
an? Why does the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., cover up the crimes=
of the Muslim world and the Mufti of Jerusalem [3] in the execution of th=
e Holocaust? Why does the State of Israel not fight global anti-Semitism?=
Why is Islamic anti-Semitism not decried from the pulpits and the bimas=
of the shuls and Hebrew schools across the Jewish world? Why aren?t Rober=
t Spencer, Bat Ye?or, and Ibn Warraq mandatory reading in Jewish day schoo=
ls? How can we fight a mortal enemy that promises our annihilation when we=
dare not speak its name?
The Jewish people, both in Israel and the diaspora, seem to be suffering=
from the Stockholm Syndrome. There can be no logical reason why an Americ=
an Jew could intellectually excuse Obama?s twenty-year friendship and clos=
eness with the anti-Semitic Farrakhan acolyte Jeremiah Wright. There is no=
way an American Jew could explain away or rationalize Obama?s connections=
to Rashid Khalidi, Ali Abunimah, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and know=
about those connections without knowing what was coming. These Jews (and=
our history is plagued with them) love ideas, not people. They are so mar=
ried to their dogma, their ideology, that they cannot, will not, see what=
is right in front of them. They worship at the church of human secularism=
. That is their religion. They have no G-d. They are merely wearing a Jewi=
sh coat, but do not speak for Jews.
It is the curse of the Jewish people historically to be betrayed by our ow=
n. This is the deepest cut of all. The kinderlach, the mamas, the tatas,=
the bubbies and zadies, shvestas and bruders who were tortured and died=
unspeakable deaths are crying out to you. Are we so broken a people that=
they shall have died in vain, for nothing?
The six million looked like you, laughed like you, denied like you. The si=
x million loved their country ? some were war heroes for Germany in World=
War I. They too thought the fringe would stay relegated to the margins of=
society.
The six million are cold in their graves, weeping for what awaits you.
The only difference between American Jews of the 2000s and the European Je=
ws of the 1930s is Israel. This is what separates you from the dehumanizat=
ion, the oven, the end. A Jewish homeland is the thin blue and white line=
between civilized men and bloodthirsty savages.
And look what Barack Obama is doing to the Jewish homeland. This is the sa=
me ?Stephen Wise [4]? Jewish mentality that sold us out and delivered us=
into the hands of the Third Reich during WWII. It was Wise who prevailed,=
not Peter Bergson [5].
Will the American diaspora repeat the same ghastly mistake again, while Sh=
oah victims still walk the earth?
Article printed from Big Journalism: http://bigjournalism.com
Posted By Pamela Geller On March 25, 2010 @ 4:43 pm In Featured Story, Hol=
ocaust, Israel, Obama | 225 Comments
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was in the U.S. and met with Bar=
ack Obama in the White House, but you won?t find any photos of Netanyahu=
with Obama on the wire services. There aren?t any. Obama wouldn?t allow=
it. Politico reported:
But the meetings were shrouded in unusual secrecy, in part because U.S. of=
ficials, who just ten days earlier called the surprise announcement of new=
housing in East Jerusalem an ?insult? and an ?affront,? made sure to rewa=
rd Netanyahu with a series of small snubs: There were no photographs relea=
sed from the meeting, and no briefing for the press.
He bows to the Saudi king, he shakes hands warmly with his ?amigo? Chavez,=
but he won?t be seen with the leader of the only democracy in the Middle=
East, and our only reliable ally there.
And this comes after he has put unprecedented strain on the U.S./Israel al=
liance by pressuring Israel for allowing Jews to build homes on Jewish lan=
d, and blaming Israel for the conflict with the Palestinians Muslims.
Obama is not a passive, weak or naive player in the Muslim/Jewish conflict=
. He was wet-nursed on Jew-hatred. He grew up in a Muslim country and stud=
ied the Koran. He knows what is prescribed for the Jews in Islam. He knows=
that the Koran says that the Jews are the Muslims? worst enemies (5:82)=
and that ?ignominy shall be their portion wheresoever they are found? (3:=
112).
He knows that Islamic tradition records Muhammad saying:
The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jew=
s and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves beh=
ind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the serv=
ant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gh=
arqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.
He must know all this, and yet has never renounced it. On the contrary, he=
embraces it, calling upon us to ?respect? Islam.
I am staggered by the speed with which Obama has sought to undermine the=
Jewish people. But knowing what I know of him after my three years of inv=
estigation for the book I wrote with Robert Spencer, The Post-American Pre=
sidency: The Obama Administration?s War on America [1], I expected nothing=
different. In the summer of 2008, I trekked to Florida to warn the alter=
cockers who were seduced by the idea of Obama, but to no avail: my voice=
and the voices of those like me are kept neatly tucked away in the blog=
box.
But now here we are. Jews may then have tried to avoid Obama?s anti-Semiti=
sm, but they cannot now avoid the consequences of avoiding Obama?s anti-Se=
mitism. He has unleashed an evil in this world the extent of which we are=
only now beginning to see. He has made the world safe for haters and kill=
ers. The post-World War II peace was no accident; it was a direct result=
of American hegemony. But now he is following the European lead and unrav=
eling it. Europe learned the wrong lessons from the war and the Holocaust.=
The lesson that Europe decided to take from Auschwitz was that everything=
was caused by nationalism. European leaders decided that therefore what=
they really needed was a European Union that would obviate their need for=
nationalism and prevent another Auschwitz.
They took all the wrong lessons from World War II and continue to apply th=
em, while ignoring the only lesson that?s really relevant from World War=
II, which is that you have to choose good and defend good, and fight with=
the intention of defeating evil. We have to be able and willing to make=
moral distinctions and stand up for the good and fight evil ? and that is=
something that both the Europeans and Obama refuse to do.
Nationalism isn?t evil. British nationalism hasn?t been evil. French natio=
nalism isn?t evil. Polish nationalism isn?t evil. American nationalism was=
n?t evil and has never been evil. Contrary to Obama?s actions, American ex=
ceptionalism [2] isn?t evil.
But what did the Jews learn from the Holocaust? What does ?never again? me=
an? Why does the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., cover up the crimes=
of the Muslim world and the Mufti of Jerusalem [3] in the execution of th=
e Holocaust? Why does the State of Israel not fight global anti-Semitism?=
Why is Islamic anti-Semitism not decried from the pulpits and the bimas=
of the shuls and Hebrew schools across the Jewish world? Why aren?t Rober=
t Spencer, Bat Ye?or, and Ibn Warraq mandatory reading in Jewish day schoo=
ls? How can we fight a mortal enemy that promises our annihilation when we=
dare not speak its name?
The Jewish people, both in Israel and the diaspora, seem to be suffering=
from the Stockholm Syndrome. There can be no logical reason why an Americ=
an Jew could intellectually excuse Obama?s twenty-year friendship and clos=
eness with the anti-Semitic Farrakhan acolyte Jeremiah Wright. There is no=
way an American Jew could explain away or rationalize Obama?s connections=
to Rashid Khalidi, Ali Abunimah, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and know=
about those connections without knowing what was coming. These Jews (and=
our history is plagued with them) love ideas, not people. They are so mar=
ried to their dogma, their ideology, that they cannot, will not, see what=
is right in front of them. They worship at the church of human secularism=
. That is their religion. They have no G-d. They are merely wearing a Jewi=
sh coat, but do not speak for Jews.
It is the curse of the Jewish people historically to be betrayed by our ow=
n. This is the deepest cut of all. The kinderlach, the mamas, the tatas,=
the bubbies and zadies, shvestas and bruders who were tortured and died=
unspeakable deaths are crying out to you. Are we so broken a people that=
they shall have died in vain, for nothing?
The six million looked like you, laughed like you, denied like you. The si=
x million loved their country ? some were war heroes for Germany in World=
War I. They too thought the fringe would stay relegated to the margins of=
society.
The six million are cold in their graves, weeping for what awaits you.
The only difference between American Jews of the 2000s and the European Je=
ws of the 1930s is Israel. This is what separates you from the dehumanizat=
ion, the oven, the end. A Jewish homeland is the thin blue and white line=
between civilized men and bloodthirsty savages.
And look what Barack Obama is doing to the Jewish homeland. This is the sa=
me ?Stephen Wise [4]? Jewish mentality that sold us out and delivered us=
into the hands of the Third Reich during WWII. It was Wise who prevailed,=
not Peter Bergson [5].
Will the American diaspora repeat the same ghastly mistake again, while Sh=
oah victims still walk the earth?
Article printed from Big Journalism: http://bigjournalism.com
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Dangers of Obama's failed Middle East policy
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/267326
The Error-Ridden Obama Middle East Policy
Jennifer Rubin - 03.27.2010 - 8:00 AM
In a must-read analysis of the Obami assault on Israel, Elliott Abrams writes:
Since the Oslo Accords of 1993, 17 years of efforts under three American presidents and six Israeli prime ministers have taught five clear lessons. Each of them is being ignored by President Obama, which is why his own particular “peace process” has so greatly harmed real efforts at peace. Today the only factor uniting Palestinian, Israeli, and Arab leaders is distrust of the quality, sagacity, and reliability of American leadership in the region.
The lessons Abrams enumerates suggest that we are in for a dangerous and destabilizing period in which the U.S.-Israeli alliance is torn asunder. First in the list of grievous errors: rather than provide Israel with security and reassurance, the Obami are out to bludgeon the Jewish state to cough up concessions:
During the George W. Bush years, the leader of the Israeli right, Ariel Sharon, decided to abandon the idea of a “Greater Israel,” impose constraints on settlement construction in the West Bank (no new settlements, no outward expansion of settlement territory), and remove every settlement in Gaza and four small ones in the West Bank. His closest advisers say all of this was possible for him only in the context of unwavering American support for Israel’s security steps—including the targeting and killing of Hamas terrorists and the refusal to deal with a terrorist leader like Arafat. What was the turning point for Sharon? Bush’s June 24, 2002, speech, where he abandoned Arafat, denounced Palestinian terrorism, and said thorough reforms were the only possible basis for Palestinian statehood. Reassured, Sharon began to act.
Contrast this with the Obama administration, where Israel has been “condemned”—the toughest word in the diplomatic dictionary—for a housing project.
Second, the Obami have failed to hold the Palestinians accountable for their own behavior or make any demands that one would ordinarily place on a party to a negotiation:
Had there been early and regular insistence that incitement end, the Mughrabi incident would never have taken place. The price for such negligence is being paid in both Israeli and Palestinian society: Every such action and every vicious broadcast helps persuade Israelis that Palestinians do not truly seek peace and helps raise a new generation of Palestinians who see Jews as enemies to hate, not neighbors with whom to reach an accommodation. This infantilization of Palestinian society, moreover, moves it further from the responsibilities of statehood, for it holds harmless the most destructive elements of West Bank life and suggests that standards of decency are not necessarily part of progress toward “peace.”
Coupled with these errors is the inordinate fixation on the Palestinian conflict, as the Iran menace goes unchecked. (”Arab leaders want to know what we will do to stop Iran; they want to know if their ally in Washington is going to be the top power in the region. Israelis wonder where the “uh oh, this will make Islamic extremists angry” argument stops. Does anyone think al-Qaeda or the Taliban would be mollified by a settlement freeze?”) And then we see the obsession with what has surely become a counterproductive peace process: “First, it means we care more about getting Syria, Egypt, or others to endorse some negotiating plan than we do about their own internal situations. . . . Second, we use all our chips for the negotiating sessions, instead of applying them to the hard work of nation building. We ask Arab states to reach out to Israel (which they will not do) when we should be demanding that they reach out to the Palestinians (which they might).”
In assessing all of this, one can’t but conclude that the errors are too fundamental and too serious to be easily reversed. It is not as if the problem were a stray comment or a clumsy encounter or one misguided adviser. It is rather the confluence of all of the bad judgments and ill-conceived ideas, which Abrams sets forth, surely held near and dear by the president himself, that have brought about the current crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations. The fixation on fruitless peace processing is not unique to the Obama administration, but has become a far more dangerous endeavor in combination with the Obami’s infatuation with the Palestinian bargaining stance and their determination to muscle Israel into concessions. It’s one thing to have fruitless talks in which the Israelis need not fear the American interlocutors; it’s quite another to be dragged to the table fearing that the Obami have in a very real sense bought into the Palestinian victimology and have become their agent rather than the proverbial “honest broker.”
The results of the Obami’s error-ridden approach are becoming apparent with each passing day: more international attacks on the legitimacy of the Jewish state and its right to self defense (Obama does it, why shouldn’t they?), the reinforcement of the Palestinian rejectionist mentality, and the looming danger of a nuclear-armed Iran, to which the U.S. has no serious response. The Obami are not simply placing Israel at risk; they are marginalizing the U.S. as a bulwark against the terror-sponsoring states of Iran and Syria and against despotic regimes far from the Middle East (they too are watching the Obami’s conduct and drawing lessons). And along the way, we have forfeited that credibility which Clinton told AIPAC the U.S. was so concerned about.
What must friends and foes think, after all, when we abandon our ally, when we ignore violent provocations, when we water down to thin gruel any response to the mullahs, and when we ignore the human-rights atrocities throughout the Muslim World? They see, sadly, the reality of the Obama White House — an administration that is frittering away America’s standing in the world and fast losing its reputation as a defender of democracy, human rights, and freedom. Israel is the immediate victim, but the entire world will become more dangerous and less free as a result.
The Error-Ridden Obama Middle East Policy
Jennifer Rubin - 03.27.2010 - 8:00 AM
In a must-read analysis of the Obami assault on Israel, Elliott Abrams writes:
Since the Oslo Accords of 1993, 17 years of efforts under three American presidents and six Israeli prime ministers have taught five clear lessons. Each of them is being ignored by President Obama, which is why his own particular “peace process” has so greatly harmed real efforts at peace. Today the only factor uniting Palestinian, Israeli, and Arab leaders is distrust of the quality, sagacity, and reliability of American leadership in the region.
The lessons Abrams enumerates suggest that we are in for a dangerous and destabilizing period in which the U.S.-Israeli alliance is torn asunder. First in the list of grievous errors: rather than provide Israel with security and reassurance, the Obami are out to bludgeon the Jewish state to cough up concessions:
During the George W. Bush years, the leader of the Israeli right, Ariel Sharon, decided to abandon the idea of a “Greater Israel,” impose constraints on settlement construction in the West Bank (no new settlements, no outward expansion of settlement territory), and remove every settlement in Gaza and four small ones in the West Bank. His closest advisers say all of this was possible for him only in the context of unwavering American support for Israel’s security steps—including the targeting and killing of Hamas terrorists and the refusal to deal with a terrorist leader like Arafat. What was the turning point for Sharon? Bush’s June 24, 2002, speech, where he abandoned Arafat, denounced Palestinian terrorism, and said thorough reforms were the only possible basis for Palestinian statehood. Reassured, Sharon began to act.
Contrast this with the Obama administration, where Israel has been “condemned”—the toughest word in the diplomatic dictionary—for a housing project.
Second, the Obami have failed to hold the Palestinians accountable for their own behavior or make any demands that one would ordinarily place on a party to a negotiation:
Had there been early and regular insistence that incitement end, the Mughrabi incident would never have taken place. The price for such negligence is being paid in both Israeli and Palestinian society: Every such action and every vicious broadcast helps persuade Israelis that Palestinians do not truly seek peace and helps raise a new generation of Palestinians who see Jews as enemies to hate, not neighbors with whom to reach an accommodation. This infantilization of Palestinian society, moreover, moves it further from the responsibilities of statehood, for it holds harmless the most destructive elements of West Bank life and suggests that standards of decency are not necessarily part of progress toward “peace.”
Coupled with these errors is the inordinate fixation on the Palestinian conflict, as the Iran menace goes unchecked. (”Arab leaders want to know what we will do to stop Iran; they want to know if their ally in Washington is going to be the top power in the region. Israelis wonder where the “uh oh, this will make Islamic extremists angry” argument stops. Does anyone think al-Qaeda or the Taliban would be mollified by a settlement freeze?”) And then we see the obsession with what has surely become a counterproductive peace process: “First, it means we care more about getting Syria, Egypt, or others to endorse some negotiating plan than we do about their own internal situations. . . . Second, we use all our chips for the negotiating sessions, instead of applying them to the hard work of nation building. We ask Arab states to reach out to Israel (which they will not do) when we should be demanding that they reach out to the Palestinians (which they might).”
In assessing all of this, one can’t but conclude that the errors are too fundamental and too serious to be easily reversed. It is not as if the problem were a stray comment or a clumsy encounter or one misguided adviser. It is rather the confluence of all of the bad judgments and ill-conceived ideas, which Abrams sets forth, surely held near and dear by the president himself, that have brought about the current crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations. The fixation on fruitless peace processing is not unique to the Obama administration, but has become a far more dangerous endeavor in combination with the Obami’s infatuation with the Palestinian bargaining stance and their determination to muscle Israel into concessions. It’s one thing to have fruitless talks in which the Israelis need not fear the American interlocutors; it’s quite another to be dragged to the table fearing that the Obami have in a very real sense bought into the Palestinian victimology and have become their agent rather than the proverbial “honest broker.”
The results of the Obami’s error-ridden approach are becoming apparent with each passing day: more international attacks on the legitimacy of the Jewish state and its right to self defense (Obama does it, why shouldn’t they?), the reinforcement of the Palestinian rejectionist mentality, and the looming danger of a nuclear-armed Iran, to which the U.S. has no serious response. The Obami are not simply placing Israel at risk; they are marginalizing the U.S. as a bulwark against the terror-sponsoring states of Iran and Syria and against despotic regimes far from the Middle East (they too are watching the Obami’s conduct and drawing lessons). And along the way, we have forfeited that credibility which Clinton told AIPAC the U.S. was so concerned about.
What must friends and foes think, after all, when we abandon our ally, when we ignore violent provocations, when we water down to thin gruel any response to the mullahs, and when we ignore the human-rights atrocities throughout the Muslim World? They see, sadly, the reality of the Obama White House — an administration that is frittering away America’s standing in the world and fast losing its reputation as a defender of democracy, human rights, and freedom. Israel is the immediate victim, but the entire world will become more dangerous and less free as a result.
Mitchell ok'd building in Jerusalem
It was only two months ago that George Mitchell had the following colloquy with Charlie Rose about the demand for a settlement freeze in Jerusalem:
GEORGE MITCHELL: … So what we got was a moratorium, ten months, far less than what was requested, but more significant than any action taken by any previous government of Israel for the 40 years that settlement enterprise has existed. …
CHARLIE ROSE: And you and Secretary Clinton praised Prime Minister Netanyahu for agreeing to that.
MITCHELL: Yes.
ROSE: It does not include East Jerusalem. There’ve been announcement in the last 48 hours of new settlement construction in East Jerusalem where the Palestinians want to make their capital.
MITCHELL: Yes.
ROSE: And it’s in the midst of Palestinians.
MITCHELL: … But for the Israelis, what they’re building in is in part of Israel.
Now, the others don’t see it that way. So you have these widely divergent perspectives on the subject. Our view is let’s get into negotiations. Let’s deal with the issues and come up with the solution to all of them including Jerusalem which will be exceedingly difficult but, in my judgment, possible.
The Israelis are not going to stop settlements in, or construction in East Jerusalem. They don’t regard that as a settlement because they think it’s part of Israel. …
ROSE: So you’re going to let them go ahead even though no one recognizes the annexation?
MITCHELL: You say “Let them go ahead.” It’s what they regard as their country. They don’t say they’re letting us go ahead when we build in Manhattan.
GEORGE MITCHELL: … So what we got was a moratorium, ten months, far less than what was requested, but more significant than any action taken by any previous government of Israel for the 40 years that settlement enterprise has existed. …
CHARLIE ROSE: And you and Secretary Clinton praised Prime Minister Netanyahu for agreeing to that.
MITCHELL: Yes.
ROSE: It does not include East Jerusalem. There’ve been announcement in the last 48 hours of new settlement construction in East Jerusalem where the Palestinians want to make their capital.
MITCHELL: Yes.
ROSE: And it’s in the midst of Palestinians.
MITCHELL: … But for the Israelis, what they’re building in is in part of Israel.
Now, the others don’t see it that way. So you have these widely divergent perspectives on the subject. Our view is let’s get into negotiations. Let’s deal with the issues and come up with the solution to all of them including Jerusalem which will be exceedingly difficult but, in my judgment, possible.
The Israelis are not going to stop settlements in, or construction in East Jerusalem. They don’t regard that as a settlement because they think it’s part of Israel. …
ROSE: So you’re going to let them go ahead even though no one recognizes the annexation?
MITCHELL: You say “Let them go ahead.” It’s what they regard as their country. They don’t say they’re letting us go ahead when we build in Manhattan.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Jewish Dems jumping ship on him
fer Rubin - 03.25.2010 - 4:56 PM
Here is evidence that Obama has gone a bit too far for some prominent Jewish activists. Writing in the Daily Beast, Lloyd Grove interviews a major political donor, James S. Tisch, chief executive of Loews Corp.: (My Comment: Tisch gives to both democrats and Republicans)
“I don’t think he’s pro-Israel,” Tisch says, voicing the suspicions of many. “I think the president comes to this from Jeremiah Wright’s church, and there’s no doubt in my mind that in Jeremiah Wright’s church, the Palestinians were portrayed as freedom fighters and not as terrorists.”
Tisch adds the flap is bound to influence the traditionally Democratic Jewish electorate, nearly 80 percent of which voted for Obama in 2008. “Now for the first time, there are a significant number of people in the organized Jewish community that feel that the president has gone too far,” Tisch says. It will be interesting to watch “what happens to the president’s approval rating among Jewish voters. I think this could really be an important point of demarcation for Jewish public opinion of the president.”
Grove says Tisch is not alone:
“Obama has done zero favors for the Democratic candidates in 2010,” says a prominent Democratic fundraiser who, like most of Jewish activists who spoke for this story, was unwilling to go on the record. “I know a lot of historical Democrats who are big check-writers and even bundlers, who have told me that until things settle down they have no interest in helping any Democrats.”
Grove, not surprisingly, finds a number of prominent Jewish Democrats unwilling to criticize Obama, let alone stop funding him. So the question remains, do most liberal Jews continue to suppress or ignore whatever misgivings they have about Obama and keep on enabling the most aggressive anti-Israel president? Or do they consider Abe Foxman’s counsel: “The issue here, for 78 percent of the Jews who voted for Obama, is you condemn your ally and your friend. … But when Syria spits in the president’s face by continuing to back Hezbollah, we don’t say anything? I think it’s nuts.”
Well, nuts would be expressing shock and disdain for the president’s Israel policies but nevertheless writing a check “with shaking fingers.” After all, the check still cashes
Here is evidence that Obama has gone a bit too far for some prominent Jewish activists. Writing in the Daily Beast, Lloyd Grove interviews a major political donor, James S. Tisch, chief executive of Loews Corp.: (My Comment: Tisch gives to both democrats and Republicans)
“I don’t think he’s pro-Israel,” Tisch says, voicing the suspicions of many. “I think the president comes to this from Jeremiah Wright’s church, and there’s no doubt in my mind that in Jeremiah Wright’s church, the Palestinians were portrayed as freedom fighters and not as terrorists.”
Tisch adds the flap is bound to influence the traditionally Democratic Jewish electorate, nearly 80 percent of which voted for Obama in 2008. “Now for the first time, there are a significant number of people in the organized Jewish community that feel that the president has gone too far,” Tisch says. It will be interesting to watch “what happens to the president’s approval rating among Jewish voters. I think this could really be an important point of demarcation for Jewish public opinion of the president.”
Grove says Tisch is not alone:
“Obama has done zero favors for the Democratic candidates in 2010,” says a prominent Democratic fundraiser who, like most of Jewish activists who spoke for this story, was unwilling to go on the record. “I know a lot of historical Democrats who are big check-writers and even bundlers, who have told me that until things settle down they have no interest in helping any Democrats.”
Grove, not surprisingly, finds a number of prominent Jewish Democrats unwilling to criticize Obama, let alone stop funding him. So the question remains, do most liberal Jews continue to suppress or ignore whatever misgivings they have about Obama and keep on enabling the most aggressive anti-Israel president? Or do they consider Abe Foxman’s counsel: “The issue here, for 78 percent of the Jews who voted for Obama, is you condemn your ally and your friend. … But when Syria spits in the president’s face by continuing to back Hezbollah, we don’t say anything? I think it’s nuts.”
Well, nuts would be expressing shock and disdain for the president’s Israel policies but nevertheless writing a check “with shaking fingers.” After all, the check still cashes
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Obama vindictive
One of the very sharp Wash Post columnist: Jackson Riehl
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/obama_and_netanyahu_pointless.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Obama and Netanyahu: pointless poison
So it’s now been two weeks since President Obama chose to seize on a poorly-timed Israeli announcement about new Jewish housing in Jerusalem to launch another public confrontation with the government of Binyamin Netanyahu. The results, so far, are these:
Obama’s demand, through Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that Israel reverse its decision on the new neighborhood and freeze all other new construction in Jerusalem has been publicly rejected by Netanyahu. And the administration, for the second time in a year, has backed down. “Ultimately,” said State spokesman P.J. Crowley at his briefing Tuesday, “the future of Jerusalem can only be resolved through the direct negotiations [between Israel and the Palestinians] that we hope will get started as quickly as possible.” That, word for word, has been the Israeli position all along.
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has adopted Obama’s original demand as his own: He’s saying he won’t begin even the indirect, “proximity” talks he previously agreed to until Israel accepts the Clinton terms on Jerusalem. How could he do otherwise? The Palestinian leader cannot be less pro-Palestinian than the White House. But Abbas cannot climb down from his position so easily -- which means that, for the second time in a year, the Middle East peace process has been stalled by a U.S.-engineered deadlock. U.S. and Israeli negotiators worked until 3 a.m. Wednesday in an attempt to come up with a formula that would allow the talks to go forward. They met again Wednesday morning. So far, no luck.
Finally, Obama has added more poison to a U.S.-Israeli relationship that already was at its lowest point in two decades. Tuesday night the White House refused to allow non-official photographers record the president’s meeting with Netanyahu; no statement was issued afterward. Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arms length. That is something the rest of the world will be quick to notice and respond to. Just like the Palestinians, European governments cannot be more friendly to an Israeli leader than the United States. Would Britain have expelled a senior Israeli diplomat Tuesday because of a flap over forged passports if there were no daylight between Obama and Netanyahu? Maybe not.
The White House’s explanations for Obama’s behavior keep shifting. At first spokesmen insisted that the president had to respond to the “insult” of the settlement announcement during a visit to Jerusalem by Vice President Biden -- even though the administration knew that, far from being a calculated snub, the decision by a local council had taken Netanyahu himself by surprise.
Next the administration argued that the scrap was a needed wake-up call for Netanyahu’s right-wing government, which, it was said, had been put on notice that its failure to move toward a settlement with Palestinians was endangering U.S. interests in the region. But -- assuming for the moment that the administration’s premise is correct -- Obama chose to challenge Netanyahu on a point that is not material to the creation of a Palestinian state. As the Israeli leader has pointed out, previous U.S. administrations and the Palestinians themselves have already accepted that Jewish neighborhoods in and around Jerusalem will be annexed to Israel in exchange for territory elsewhere.
U.S. pressure on Netanyahu will be needed if the peace process ever reaches the point where the genuinely contentious issues, like Palestinian refugees or the exact territorial tradeoffs, are on the table. But instead of waiting for that moment and pushing Netanyahu on a point where he might be vulnerable to domestic challenge, Obama picked a fight over something that virtually all Israelis agree on, and before serious discussions have even begun. As the veteran Middle East analyst Robert Malley put it to The Post’s Glenn Kessler, “U.S. pressure can work, but it needs to be at the right time, on the right issue and in the right political context. The administration is ready for a fight, but it realized the issue, timing and context were wrong.”
A new administration can be excused for making such a mistake in the treacherous and complex theater of Middle East diplomacy. That’s why Obama was given a pass by many when he made exactly the same mistake last year. The second time around, the president doesn’t look naive. He appears ideological -- and vindictive.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/obama_and_netanyahu_pointless.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Obama and Netanyahu: pointless poison
So it’s now been two weeks since President Obama chose to seize on a poorly-timed Israeli announcement about new Jewish housing in Jerusalem to launch another public confrontation with the government of Binyamin Netanyahu. The results, so far, are these:
Obama’s demand, through Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that Israel reverse its decision on the new neighborhood and freeze all other new construction in Jerusalem has been publicly rejected by Netanyahu. And the administration, for the second time in a year, has backed down. “Ultimately,” said State spokesman P.J. Crowley at his briefing Tuesday, “the future of Jerusalem can only be resolved through the direct negotiations [between Israel and the Palestinians] that we hope will get started as quickly as possible.” That, word for word, has been the Israeli position all along.
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has adopted Obama’s original demand as his own: He’s saying he won’t begin even the indirect, “proximity” talks he previously agreed to until Israel accepts the Clinton terms on Jerusalem. How could he do otherwise? The Palestinian leader cannot be less pro-Palestinian than the White House. But Abbas cannot climb down from his position so easily -- which means that, for the second time in a year, the Middle East peace process has been stalled by a U.S.-engineered deadlock. U.S. and Israeli negotiators worked until 3 a.m. Wednesday in an attempt to come up with a formula that would allow the talks to go forward. They met again Wednesday morning. So far, no luck.
Finally, Obama has added more poison to a U.S.-Israeli relationship that already was at its lowest point in two decades. Tuesday night the White House refused to allow non-official photographers record the president’s meeting with Netanyahu; no statement was issued afterward. Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arms length. That is something the rest of the world will be quick to notice and respond to. Just like the Palestinians, European governments cannot be more friendly to an Israeli leader than the United States. Would Britain have expelled a senior Israeli diplomat Tuesday because of a flap over forged passports if there were no daylight between Obama and Netanyahu? Maybe not.
The White House’s explanations for Obama’s behavior keep shifting. At first spokesmen insisted that the president had to respond to the “insult” of the settlement announcement during a visit to Jerusalem by Vice President Biden -- even though the administration knew that, far from being a calculated snub, the decision by a local council had taken Netanyahu himself by surprise.
Next the administration argued that the scrap was a needed wake-up call for Netanyahu’s right-wing government, which, it was said, had been put on notice that its failure to move toward a settlement with Palestinians was endangering U.S. interests in the region. But -- assuming for the moment that the administration’s premise is correct -- Obama chose to challenge Netanyahu on a point that is not material to the creation of a Palestinian state. As the Israeli leader has pointed out, previous U.S. administrations and the Palestinians themselves have already accepted that Jewish neighborhoods in and around Jerusalem will be annexed to Israel in exchange for territory elsewhere.
U.S. pressure on Netanyahu will be needed if the peace process ever reaches the point where the genuinely contentious issues, like Palestinian refugees or the exact territorial tradeoffs, are on the table. But instead of waiting for that moment and pushing Netanyahu on a point where he might be vulnerable to domestic challenge, Obama picked a fight over something that virtually all Israelis agree on, and before serious discussions have even begun. As the veteran Middle East analyst Robert Malley put it to The Post’s Glenn Kessler, “U.S. pressure can work, but it needs to be at the right time, on the right issue and in the right political context. The administration is ready for a fight, but it realized the issue, timing and context were wrong.”
A new administration can be excused for making such a mistake in the treacherous and complex theater of Middle East diplomacy. That’s why Obama was given a pass by many when he made exactly the same mistake last year. The second time around, the president doesn’t look naive. He appears ideological -- and vindictive.
Obama continues to fight Israel
After meeting, deafening silence
By: Laura Rozen and Ben Smith
March 23, 2010 11:51 PM EDT
The Obama administration shifted this week from red hot anger at Benjamin Netanyahu to an icier suspicion toward the Israeli Prime Minister, who made clear in a marathon of meetings with U.S. officials that he would give ground only grudgingly on their goal of stopping the continued construction of new Israeli housing units on disputed territory.
Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office Tuesday evening for an unexpectedly-long 89-minutes until about 7:00, then stayed to consult with his own staff in the Roosevelt Room, according to a source briefed on the meeting. The two then met again for 35 minutes at 8:20 at Netanyahu's request, the source said. But the meetings were shrouded in unusual secrecy, in part because U.S. officials, who just ten days earlier called the surprise announcement of new housing in East Jerusalem an “insult” and an “affront,” made sure to reward Netanyahu with a series of small snubs: There were no photographs released from the meeting, and no briefing for the press.
And as of late Tuesday evening, neither side had released the usual “readout” of the meetings’ content – a likely indicator of the distance between the sides.
But any impression that Netanyahu’s trip would mark a renewal of the troubled relationship between U.S. and Israeli leaders had faded by the time the men met. Netanyahu had spent the previous 24 hours of a U.S. visit lobbying allies in Congress to push back against public American criticism and to turn the focus to Iran, congressional sources said, and delivered a defiant speech to the pro-Israel group AIPAC, insisting on Israel’s right to build in Jerusalem.
He also complained to U.S. officials of his limited power over the housing construction, though he promised in meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden to do his best to avoid future unpleasant surprises, officials said.
The limits of Netanyahu’s promise became clear minutes before his scheduled meeting with Obama, when the Jerusalem municipality gave final approval to a settler group to proceed on a controversial development in the city, an announcement which prompted a lawmaker from one of Israeli’s liberal opposition parties to call the prime minister a “pyromaniac.”
“This is exactly what we expect Prime Minister Netanyahu to get control of,” a senior U.S. official told POLITICO Tuesday evening. “The current drip-drip-drip of projects in East Jerusalem impedes progress.”
The clearest sign of Netanyahu’s rift with the White House, however, may have been his intense focus on Congress, which has blunted the attempts of many of Obama’s predecessors to pressure the Jewish state.
“We in Congress stand by Israel,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, standing beside Netanyahu Tuesday. “In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel.”
But while Congress was speaking publicly with one voice, behind the scenes Netanyahu seemed to be trying to drive a wedge between it and the White House.
The Israeli leader met separately with groups of congressmen and senators, finding support on both sides of the aisle, but particular warmth from Republicans.
In an interview with POLITICO after his meeting with Netanyahu, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican member of Congress, made it clear that he supports the Israeli government’s plans for new housing in East Jerusalem rather than what he described as the Obama administration’s overreaction in criticizing the move.
“None of us believe we ought to go back to the ’67 lines,” Cantor said. “That brings into question why in the world would some construction in Jerusalem that no one thinks would be part of a Palestinian state ... be an issue.”
House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana was more critical. He called the White House stance on the Jewish state “absurd,” saying President Barack Obama needs to stop trying to “micromanage” Israel on settlement issues.
“I never thought I’d live to see the day that an American administration would denounce the Jewish state of Israel for rebuilding Jerusalem,” Pence told reporters.
While Republicans presented themselves as the more steadfast champions of Israel, Democrats were circumspect.
Asked about the Republican criticism, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) sounded as though he had not been talking to the same person as Cantor and Pence. “Well, that’s certainly not what [Prime Minister] Netanyahu’s message was to us today,” he said, adding, “it was a very positive, upbeat meeting.”
“I think that the Republicans are spending an enormous amount of time being critical and disparaging without offering any sort of alternatives to anything,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry.
In a meeting with Jewish members of Congress, Netanyahu did most of the talking and determinedly turned the subject from settlements to Iran, according to a Democratic Hill staffer who did not want to be quoted by name.
“He knows that this is something that is going to move members of Congress, even if they are angry about the expansion of Jewish housing, that they are going to respond to Iran as a threat,” the staffer said. “He connected Iran to just about every subject that was raised.”
Netanyahu, according to this account, pushed members to get a reconciled Iran sanctions bill to the president’s desk soon, even if there is collateral damage and that ordinary Iranian people would be hurt by the sanctions, not just the regime.
Netanyahu also complained that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is “not a partner; [he] won’t come to the table,” another Democratic Hill staffer said, summarizing. Netanyahu “made excuses for the complicated [housing] approval process ... the point being he had no idea what happened when Vice President Joe Biden was there.”
But with the special relationship between the two countries in a state of unusual ferment, Netanyahu’s tortured meetings with the series of Americans appeared anything but decisive.
Netanyahu “is too smart not to understand that Washington has changed,” veteran Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller told POLITICO on Tuesday. “And that a potentially transformative president who is now king of the world for a day is facing off against Benjamin Netanyahu, king of Israel. And the fight between the two is not today. What we see now is positioning."
By: Laura Rozen and Ben Smith
March 23, 2010 11:51 PM EDT
The Obama administration shifted this week from red hot anger at Benjamin Netanyahu to an icier suspicion toward the Israeli Prime Minister, who made clear in a marathon of meetings with U.S. officials that he would give ground only grudgingly on their goal of stopping the continued construction of new Israeli housing units on disputed territory.
Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office Tuesday evening for an unexpectedly-long 89-minutes until about 7:00, then stayed to consult with his own staff in the Roosevelt Room, according to a source briefed on the meeting. The two then met again for 35 minutes at 8:20 at Netanyahu's request, the source said. But the meetings were shrouded in unusual secrecy, in part because U.S. officials, who just ten days earlier called the surprise announcement of new housing in East Jerusalem an “insult” and an “affront,” made sure to reward Netanyahu with a series of small snubs: There were no photographs released from the meeting, and no briefing for the press.
And as of late Tuesday evening, neither side had released the usual “readout” of the meetings’ content – a likely indicator of the distance between the sides.
But any impression that Netanyahu’s trip would mark a renewal of the troubled relationship between U.S. and Israeli leaders had faded by the time the men met. Netanyahu had spent the previous 24 hours of a U.S. visit lobbying allies in Congress to push back against public American criticism and to turn the focus to Iran, congressional sources said, and delivered a defiant speech to the pro-Israel group AIPAC, insisting on Israel’s right to build in Jerusalem.
He also complained to U.S. officials of his limited power over the housing construction, though he promised in meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden to do his best to avoid future unpleasant surprises, officials said.
The limits of Netanyahu’s promise became clear minutes before his scheduled meeting with Obama, when the Jerusalem municipality gave final approval to a settler group to proceed on a controversial development in the city, an announcement which prompted a lawmaker from one of Israeli’s liberal opposition parties to call the prime minister a “pyromaniac.”
“This is exactly what we expect Prime Minister Netanyahu to get control of,” a senior U.S. official told POLITICO Tuesday evening. “The current drip-drip-drip of projects in East Jerusalem impedes progress.”
The clearest sign of Netanyahu’s rift with the White House, however, may have been his intense focus on Congress, which has blunted the attempts of many of Obama’s predecessors to pressure the Jewish state.
“We in Congress stand by Israel,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, standing beside Netanyahu Tuesday. “In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel.”
But while Congress was speaking publicly with one voice, behind the scenes Netanyahu seemed to be trying to drive a wedge between it and the White House.
The Israeli leader met separately with groups of congressmen and senators, finding support on both sides of the aisle, but particular warmth from Republicans.
In an interview with POLITICO after his meeting with Netanyahu, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican member of Congress, made it clear that he supports the Israeli government’s plans for new housing in East Jerusalem rather than what he described as the Obama administration’s overreaction in criticizing the move.
“None of us believe we ought to go back to the ’67 lines,” Cantor said. “That brings into question why in the world would some construction in Jerusalem that no one thinks would be part of a Palestinian state ... be an issue.”
House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana was more critical. He called the White House stance on the Jewish state “absurd,” saying President Barack Obama needs to stop trying to “micromanage” Israel on settlement issues.
“I never thought I’d live to see the day that an American administration would denounce the Jewish state of Israel for rebuilding Jerusalem,” Pence told reporters.
While Republicans presented themselves as the more steadfast champions of Israel, Democrats were circumspect.
Asked about the Republican criticism, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) sounded as though he had not been talking to the same person as Cantor and Pence. “Well, that’s certainly not what [Prime Minister] Netanyahu’s message was to us today,” he said, adding, “it was a very positive, upbeat meeting.”
“I think that the Republicans are spending an enormous amount of time being critical and disparaging without offering any sort of alternatives to anything,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry.
In a meeting with Jewish members of Congress, Netanyahu did most of the talking and determinedly turned the subject from settlements to Iran, according to a Democratic Hill staffer who did not want to be quoted by name.
“He knows that this is something that is going to move members of Congress, even if they are angry about the expansion of Jewish housing, that they are going to respond to Iran as a threat,” the staffer said. “He connected Iran to just about every subject that was raised.”
Netanyahu, according to this account, pushed members to get a reconciled Iran sanctions bill to the president’s desk soon, even if there is collateral damage and that ordinary Iranian people would be hurt by the sanctions, not just the regime.
Netanyahu also complained that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is “not a partner; [he] won’t come to the table,” another Democratic Hill staffer said, summarizing. Netanyahu “made excuses for the complicated [housing] approval process ... the point being he had no idea what happened when Vice President Joe Biden was there.”
But with the special relationship between the two countries in a state of unusual ferment, Netanyahu’s tortured meetings with the series of Americans appeared anything but decisive.
Netanyahu “is too smart not to understand that Washington has changed,” veteran Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller told POLITICO on Tuesday. “And that a potentially transformative president who is now king of the world for a day is facing off against Benjamin Netanyahu, king of Israel. And the fight between the two is not today. What we see now is positioning."
Democrats blame Obama for hurting Israel
Monday, March 22, 2010 INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING
Koch on Obama and Israel: Why the trust is gone
By Ed Koch
I consider the Obama administration’s recent actions against the Israeli government to be outrageous and a breach of trust. I refer to the denunciations by Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other administration officials The world knows what happened; nevertheless, I will try to put it into context. ShareThis
Vice President Joe Biden was in Jerusalem to convey to the Israelis and the world that the United States government is committed to protecting and assuring the security of Israel from attack. While he was there, an Israeli government minister announced that the Israeli government had authorized the construction of 1,600 apartments in East Jerusalem to be occupied by Jews. Currently, 280,000 Jews live in East Jerusalem, and these apartments were to be added to an existing complex, built on land owned by Jews; about 250,000 Jews live on the West Bank outside of Jerusalem.
The timing of the Israeli government’s announcement was unfortunate and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for it, but it did not mark any change in the Israeli government’s policy. That policy is and has long been to allow construction of homes for Jews in East Jerusalem.
Koch on Obama and Israel: Why the trust is gone
By Ed Koch
I consider the Obama administration’s recent actions against the Israeli government to be outrageous and a breach of trust. I refer to the denunciations by Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other administration officials The world knows what happened; nevertheless, I will try to put it into context. ShareThis
Vice President Joe Biden was in Jerusalem to convey to the Israelis and the world that the United States government is committed to protecting and assuring the security of Israel from attack. While he was there, an Israeli government minister announced that the Israeli government had authorized the construction of 1,600 apartments in East Jerusalem to be occupied by Jews. Currently, 280,000 Jews live in East Jerusalem, and these apartments were to be added to an existing complex, built on land owned by Jews; about 250,000 Jews live on the West Bank outside of Jerusalem.
The timing of the Israeli government’s announcement was unfortunate and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for it, but it did not mark any change in the Israeli government’s policy. That policy is and has long been to allow construction of homes for Jews in East Jerusalem.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Obama's Israel bashing is screwing up peace chances
Was Obama's confrontation with Israel premeditated?
By Yossi Klein Halevi
Obama is directly responsible for one of the most absurd turns in the
history of Middle East negotiations. Though Palestinian leaders
negotiated with Israeli governments that built extensively
By Yossi Klein Halevi
Obama is directly responsible for one of the most absurd turns in the
history of Middle East negotiations. Though Palestinian leaders
negotiated with Israeli governments that built extensively
Obama's war on Israel
March 21, 2010
Obama's War on Israel
By Caroline Glick
Why has President Barak Obama decided to foment a crisis in US relations with Israel?
Some commentators have claimed that it is Israel's fault. As they tell it, the news that Israel has not banned Jewish construction in Jerusalem - after repeatedly refusing to ban such construction - drove Obama into a fit of uncontrolled rage from which he has yet to recover.
Receive news alerts
Sign Up
Caroline Glick RealClearPolitics
President Prime Minister
Israeli government Washington
Ramat Shlomo Jerusalem
United States Islamic Republic of Iran
Israel Binyamin Netanyahu
Barak Obama
[+] More
While popular, this claim makes no sense. Obama didn't come to be called "No drama Obama" for nothing. It is not credible to argue that Jerusalem's local planning board's decision to approve the construction of 1,600 housing units in Ramat Shlomo drove cool Obama into a fit of wild rage at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Obama himself claims that he has launched a political war against Israel in the interest of promoting peace. But this claim, too, does not stand up to scrutiny.
On Friday, Obama ordered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to present Netanyahu with a four-part ultimatum.
First, Israel must cancel the approval of the housing units in Ramat Shlomo.
Second, Israel must prohibit all construction for Jews in Jerusalem neighborhoods built since 1967.
Third, Israel must make a gesture to the Palestinians to show them we want peace. The US suggests releasing hundreds of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons.
Fourth, Israel must agree to negotiate all substantive issues, including the partition of Jerusalem (including the Jewish neighborhoods constructed since 1967 that are now home to more than a half million Israelis) and the immigration of millions of hostile foreign Arabs to Israel under the rubric of the so-called "right of return," in the course of indirect, Obama administration-mediated negotiations with the Palestinians. To date, Israel has maintained that substantive discussions can only be conducted in direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian officials.
If Israel does not accept all four US demands, then the Obama administration will boycott Netanyahu and his senior ministers. In the first instance, this means that if Netanyahu comes to Washington next week for the AIPAC conference, no senior administration official will meet with him.
Obama's ultimatum makes clear that mediating peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not a goal he is interested in achieving.
Obama's new demands follow the months of American pressure that eventually coerced Netanyahu into announcing both his support for a Palestinian state and a 10-month ban on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria. No previous Israeli government had ever been asked to make the latter concession.
Netanyahu was led to believe that in return for these concessions Obama would begin behaving like the credible mediator his predecessors were. But instead of acting like his predecessors, Obama has behaved like the Palestinians. Rather than reward Netanyahu for taking a risk for peace, Obama has, in the model of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, pocketed Netanyahu's concessions and escalated his demands. This is not the behavior of a mediator. This is the behavior of an adversary.
With the US president treating Israel like an enemy, the Palestinians have no reason to agree to sit down and negotiate. Indeed, they have no choice but to declare war.
And so, in the wake of Obama's onslaught on Israel's right to Jerusalem, Palestinian incitement against Israel and Jews has risen to levels not seen since the outbreak of the last terror war in September 2000. And just as night follows day, that incitement has led to violence. This week's Arab riots from Jerusalem to Jaffa, and the renewed rocket offensive from Gaza are directly related to Obama's malicious attacks on Israel.
But if his campaign against Israel wasn't driven by a presidential temper tantrum, and it isn't aimed at promoting peace, what explains it? What is Obama trying to accomplish?
There are five explanations for Obama's behavior. And they are not mutually exclusive.
First, Obama's assault on Israel is likely related to the failure of his Iran policy. Over the past week, senior administration officials including Gen. David Petraeus have made viciously defamatory attacks on Israel, insinuating that the construction of homes for Jews in Jerusalem is a primary cause for bad behavior on the part of Iran and its proxies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. By this line of thinking, if Israel simply returned to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines, Iran's centrifuges would stop spinning, and Syria, al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hizbullah, Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards would all beat their swords into plowshares.
Second, even more important than its usefulness as a tool to divert the public's attention away from the failure of his Iran policy, Obama's assault against Israel may well be aimed at maintaining that failed policy. Specifically, he may be attacking Israel in a bid to coerce Netanyahu into agreeing to give Obama veto power over any Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations. That is, the anti-Israel campaign may be a means to force Israel to stand by as Obama allows Iran to build a nuclear arsenal.
For the past several months, an endless line of senior administration officials have descended on Jerusalem with the expressed aim of convincing Netanyahu to relinquish Israel's right to independently strike Iran's nuclear installations. All of these officials have returned to Washington empty-handed. Perhaps Obama has decided that since quiet pressure has failed to cow Netanyahu, it is time to launch a frontal attack against him.
This brings us to the third explanation for why Obama has decided to go to war with the democratically elected Israeli government. Obama's advisers told friendly reporters that Obama wants to bring down Netanyahu's government. By making demands Netanyahu and his coalition partners cannot accept, Obama hopes to either bring down the government and replace Netanyahu and Likud with the far-leftist Tzipi Livni and Kadima, or force Israel Beiteinu and Shas to bolt the coalition and compel Netanyahu to accept Livni as a co-prime minister. Livni, of course, won Obama's heart when in 2008 she opted for an election rather than accept Shas's demand that she protect the unity of Jerusalem.
The fourth explanation for Obama's behavior is that he seeks to realign US foreign policy away from Israel. Obama's constant attempts to cultivate relations with Iran's unelected president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ahmadinejad's Arab lackey Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, and Turkey's Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan make clear that he views developing US relations with these anti-American regimes as a primary foreign policy goal.
Given that all of these leaders have demanded that in exchange for better relations Obama abandon Israel as a US ally, and in light of the professed anti-Israel positions of several of his senior foreign policy advisers, it is possible that Obama is seeking to downgrade US relations with Israel. His consistent castigation of Israel as obstructionist and defiant has led some surveys to claim that over the past year US popular support for Israel has dropped from 77 to 58 percent.
The more Obama fills newspaper headlines with allegations that Israel is responsible for everything from US combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan to Iran's nuclear program, the lower those numbers can be expected to fall. And the more popular American support for Israel falls, the easier it will be for Obama to engineer an open breach with the Jewish state.
The final explanation for Obama's behavior is that he is using his manufactured crisis to justify adopting an overtly anti-Israel position vis-à-vis the Palestinians. On Thursday, The New York Times reported that administration officials are considering having Obama present his own "peace plan." Given the administration's denial of Israel's right to Jerusalem, an "Obama plan," would doubtless require Israel to withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines and expel some 700,000 Jews from their homes.
Likewise, the crisis Obama has manufactured with Israel could pave the way for him to recognize a Palestinian state if the Palestinians follow through on their threat to unilaterally declare statehood next year regardless of the status of negotiations with Israel. Such a US move could in turn lead to the deployment of US forces in Judea and Samaria to "protect" the unilaterally declared Palestinian state from Israel.
Both Obama's behavior and the policy goals it indicates make it clear that Netanyahu's current policy of trying to appease Obama by making concrete concessions is no longer justified. Obama is not interested in being won over. The question is, what should Netanyahu do?
One front in the war Obama has started is at home. Netanyahu must ensure that he maintains popular domestic support for his government to scuttle Obama's plan to overthrow his government. So far, in large part due to Obama's unprecedented nastiness, Netanyahu's domestic support has held steady. A poll conducted for IMRA news service this week by Maagar Mohot shows that fully 75% of Israeli Jews believe Obama's behavior toward Israel is unjustified. As for Netanyahu, 71% of Israeli Jews believe his refusal to accept Obama's demand to ban Jewish building in Jerusalem proves he is a strong leader. Similarly, a Shvakim Panorama poll for Israel Radio shows public support for Kadima has dropped by more than 30% since last year's election.
The other front in Obama's war is the American public. By blaming Israel for the state of the Middle East and launching personal barbs against Netanyahu, Obama seeks to drive down popular American support for Israel. In building a strategy to counter Obama's moves, Netanyahu has to keep two issues in mind.
First, no foreign leader can win a popularity contest against a sitting US president. Therefore, Netanyahu must continue to avoid any personal attacks on Obama. He must limit his counter-offensive to a defense of Israel's interests and his government's policies.
Second, Netanyahu must remember that Obama's hostility toward Israel is not shared by the majority of Americans. Netanyahu's goal must be to strengthen and increase the majority of Americans who support Israel. To this end, Netanyahu must go to Washington next week and speak at the annual AIPAC conference as planned, despite the administration's threat to boycott him.
While in Washington, Netanyahu should meet with every Congressman and Senator who wishes to meet with him as well as every administration member who seeks him out. Moreover, he should give interviews to as many television networks, newspapers and major radio programs as possible in order to bring his message directly to the American people.
Obama has made clear that he is not Israel's ally. And for the remainder of his term, he will do everything he can to downgrade US relations with Israel while maintaining his constant genuflection to the likes of Iran, Syria, the Palestinians and Turkey.
But like Israel, the US is a free country. And as long as popular support for Israel holds steady, Obama's options will be limited. Netanyahu's task is to maintain that support in the face of administration hostility as he implements policies toward Iran and the Arabs alike that are necessary to ensure Israel's long-term survival and prosperity.
caroline@carolineglick.com
Obama's War on Israel
By Caroline Glick
Why has President Barak Obama decided to foment a crisis in US relations with Israel?
Some commentators have claimed that it is Israel's fault. As they tell it, the news that Israel has not banned Jewish construction in Jerusalem - after repeatedly refusing to ban such construction - drove Obama into a fit of uncontrolled rage from which he has yet to recover.
Receive news alerts
Sign Up
Caroline Glick RealClearPolitics
President Prime Minister
Israeli government Washington
Ramat Shlomo Jerusalem
United States Islamic Republic of Iran
Israel Binyamin Netanyahu
Barak Obama
[+] More
While popular, this claim makes no sense. Obama didn't come to be called "No drama Obama" for nothing. It is not credible to argue that Jerusalem's local planning board's decision to approve the construction of 1,600 housing units in Ramat Shlomo drove cool Obama into a fit of wild rage at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Obama himself claims that he has launched a political war against Israel in the interest of promoting peace. But this claim, too, does not stand up to scrutiny.
On Friday, Obama ordered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to present Netanyahu with a four-part ultimatum.
First, Israel must cancel the approval of the housing units in Ramat Shlomo.
Second, Israel must prohibit all construction for Jews in Jerusalem neighborhoods built since 1967.
Third, Israel must make a gesture to the Palestinians to show them we want peace. The US suggests releasing hundreds of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons.
Fourth, Israel must agree to negotiate all substantive issues, including the partition of Jerusalem (including the Jewish neighborhoods constructed since 1967 that are now home to more than a half million Israelis) and the immigration of millions of hostile foreign Arabs to Israel under the rubric of the so-called "right of return," in the course of indirect, Obama administration-mediated negotiations with the Palestinians. To date, Israel has maintained that substantive discussions can only be conducted in direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian officials.
If Israel does not accept all four US demands, then the Obama administration will boycott Netanyahu and his senior ministers. In the first instance, this means that if Netanyahu comes to Washington next week for the AIPAC conference, no senior administration official will meet with him.
Obama's ultimatum makes clear that mediating peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not a goal he is interested in achieving.
Obama's new demands follow the months of American pressure that eventually coerced Netanyahu into announcing both his support for a Palestinian state and a 10-month ban on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria. No previous Israeli government had ever been asked to make the latter concession.
Netanyahu was led to believe that in return for these concessions Obama would begin behaving like the credible mediator his predecessors were. But instead of acting like his predecessors, Obama has behaved like the Palestinians. Rather than reward Netanyahu for taking a risk for peace, Obama has, in the model of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, pocketed Netanyahu's concessions and escalated his demands. This is not the behavior of a mediator. This is the behavior of an adversary.
With the US president treating Israel like an enemy, the Palestinians have no reason to agree to sit down and negotiate. Indeed, they have no choice but to declare war.
And so, in the wake of Obama's onslaught on Israel's right to Jerusalem, Palestinian incitement against Israel and Jews has risen to levels not seen since the outbreak of the last terror war in September 2000. And just as night follows day, that incitement has led to violence. This week's Arab riots from Jerusalem to Jaffa, and the renewed rocket offensive from Gaza are directly related to Obama's malicious attacks on Israel.
But if his campaign against Israel wasn't driven by a presidential temper tantrum, and it isn't aimed at promoting peace, what explains it? What is Obama trying to accomplish?
There are five explanations for Obama's behavior. And they are not mutually exclusive.
First, Obama's assault on Israel is likely related to the failure of his Iran policy. Over the past week, senior administration officials including Gen. David Petraeus have made viciously defamatory attacks on Israel, insinuating that the construction of homes for Jews in Jerusalem is a primary cause for bad behavior on the part of Iran and its proxies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. By this line of thinking, if Israel simply returned to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines, Iran's centrifuges would stop spinning, and Syria, al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hizbullah, Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards would all beat their swords into plowshares.
Second, even more important than its usefulness as a tool to divert the public's attention away from the failure of his Iran policy, Obama's assault against Israel may well be aimed at maintaining that failed policy. Specifically, he may be attacking Israel in a bid to coerce Netanyahu into agreeing to give Obama veto power over any Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations. That is, the anti-Israel campaign may be a means to force Israel to stand by as Obama allows Iran to build a nuclear arsenal.
For the past several months, an endless line of senior administration officials have descended on Jerusalem with the expressed aim of convincing Netanyahu to relinquish Israel's right to independently strike Iran's nuclear installations. All of these officials have returned to Washington empty-handed. Perhaps Obama has decided that since quiet pressure has failed to cow Netanyahu, it is time to launch a frontal attack against him.
This brings us to the third explanation for why Obama has decided to go to war with the democratically elected Israeli government. Obama's advisers told friendly reporters that Obama wants to bring down Netanyahu's government. By making demands Netanyahu and his coalition partners cannot accept, Obama hopes to either bring down the government and replace Netanyahu and Likud with the far-leftist Tzipi Livni and Kadima, or force Israel Beiteinu and Shas to bolt the coalition and compel Netanyahu to accept Livni as a co-prime minister. Livni, of course, won Obama's heart when in 2008 she opted for an election rather than accept Shas's demand that she protect the unity of Jerusalem.
The fourth explanation for Obama's behavior is that he seeks to realign US foreign policy away from Israel. Obama's constant attempts to cultivate relations with Iran's unelected president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ahmadinejad's Arab lackey Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, and Turkey's Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan make clear that he views developing US relations with these anti-American regimes as a primary foreign policy goal.
Given that all of these leaders have demanded that in exchange for better relations Obama abandon Israel as a US ally, and in light of the professed anti-Israel positions of several of his senior foreign policy advisers, it is possible that Obama is seeking to downgrade US relations with Israel. His consistent castigation of Israel as obstructionist and defiant has led some surveys to claim that over the past year US popular support for Israel has dropped from 77 to 58 percent.
The more Obama fills newspaper headlines with allegations that Israel is responsible for everything from US combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan to Iran's nuclear program, the lower those numbers can be expected to fall. And the more popular American support for Israel falls, the easier it will be for Obama to engineer an open breach with the Jewish state.
The final explanation for Obama's behavior is that he is using his manufactured crisis to justify adopting an overtly anti-Israel position vis-à-vis the Palestinians. On Thursday, The New York Times reported that administration officials are considering having Obama present his own "peace plan." Given the administration's denial of Israel's right to Jerusalem, an "Obama plan," would doubtless require Israel to withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines and expel some 700,000 Jews from their homes.
Likewise, the crisis Obama has manufactured with Israel could pave the way for him to recognize a Palestinian state if the Palestinians follow through on their threat to unilaterally declare statehood next year regardless of the status of negotiations with Israel. Such a US move could in turn lead to the deployment of US forces in Judea and Samaria to "protect" the unilaterally declared Palestinian state from Israel.
Both Obama's behavior and the policy goals it indicates make it clear that Netanyahu's current policy of trying to appease Obama by making concrete concessions is no longer justified. Obama is not interested in being won over. The question is, what should Netanyahu do?
One front in the war Obama has started is at home. Netanyahu must ensure that he maintains popular domestic support for his government to scuttle Obama's plan to overthrow his government. So far, in large part due to Obama's unprecedented nastiness, Netanyahu's domestic support has held steady. A poll conducted for IMRA news service this week by Maagar Mohot shows that fully 75% of Israeli Jews believe Obama's behavior toward Israel is unjustified. As for Netanyahu, 71% of Israeli Jews believe his refusal to accept Obama's demand to ban Jewish building in Jerusalem proves he is a strong leader. Similarly, a Shvakim Panorama poll for Israel Radio shows public support for Kadima has dropped by more than 30% since last year's election.
The other front in Obama's war is the American public. By blaming Israel for the state of the Middle East and launching personal barbs against Netanyahu, Obama seeks to drive down popular American support for Israel. In building a strategy to counter Obama's moves, Netanyahu has to keep two issues in mind.
First, no foreign leader can win a popularity contest against a sitting US president. Therefore, Netanyahu must continue to avoid any personal attacks on Obama. He must limit his counter-offensive to a defense of Israel's interests and his government's policies.
Second, Netanyahu must remember that Obama's hostility toward Israel is not shared by the majority of Americans. Netanyahu's goal must be to strengthen and increase the majority of Americans who support Israel. To this end, Netanyahu must go to Washington next week and speak at the annual AIPAC conference as planned, despite the administration's threat to boycott him.
While in Washington, Netanyahu should meet with every Congressman and Senator who wishes to meet with him as well as every administration member who seeks him out. Moreover, he should give interviews to as many television networks, newspapers and major radio programs as possible in order to bring his message directly to the American people.
Obama has made clear that he is not Israel's ally. And for the remainder of his term, he will do everything he can to downgrade US relations with Israel while maintaining his constant genuflection to the likes of Iran, Syria, the Palestinians and Turkey.
But like Israel, the US is a free country. And as long as popular support for Israel holds steady, Obama's options will be limited. Netanyahu's task is to maintain that support in the face of administration hostility as he implements policies toward Iran and the Arabs alike that are necessary to ensure Israel's long-term survival and prosperity.
caroline@carolineglick.com
Obama picking on Israel as an excuse for failing in Iran
Jennifer Rubin - 03.23.2010 - 12:58 PM
Jonathan, the administration really needs to keep its excuses straight. Hillary at AIPAC said the Obami had to go nuts because Israel was showing “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel and because the housing announcement ”undermines America’s unique ability to play a role – an essential role, I might add — in the peace process. Our credibility in this process depends in part on our willingness to praise both sides when they are courageous, and when we don’t agree, to say so, and say so unequivocally.” Now from Hirsh we hear it’s because it makes Obama look less effective on Iran. (But kicking its allies in the shins will restore that effectiveness and credibility?)
Whatever the question, the answer for this crew is: it’s Israel’s fault.
And who sounds most determined in denying Iran a nuclear weapon? Compare this. Tony Blair:
Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear-weapons capability. They must know that we will do whatever it takes to stop them getting it. The danger is if they suspect for a moment we might allow such a thing. We cannot and will not.
Hillary Clinton:
We are working with our partners in the United Nations on new Security Council sanctions that will show Iran’s leaders that there are real consequences for their intransigence, that the only choice is to live up to their international obligations. Our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite. It is taking time to produce these sanctions, and we believe that time is a worthwhile investment for winning the broadest possible support for our efforts. But we will not compromise our commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring these weapons.
It probably Israel’s fault Hillary gave such a weak speech.
Jonathan, the administration really needs to keep its excuses straight. Hillary at AIPAC said the Obami had to go nuts because Israel was showing “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel and because the housing announcement ”undermines America’s unique ability to play a role – an essential role, I might add — in the peace process. Our credibility in this process depends in part on our willingness to praise both sides when they are courageous, and when we don’t agree, to say so, and say so unequivocally.” Now from Hirsh we hear it’s because it makes Obama look less effective on Iran. (But kicking its allies in the shins will restore that effectiveness and credibility?)
Whatever the question, the answer for this crew is: it’s Israel’s fault.
And who sounds most determined in denying Iran a nuclear weapon? Compare this. Tony Blair:
Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear-weapons capability. They must know that we will do whatever it takes to stop them getting it. The danger is if they suspect for a moment we might allow such a thing. We cannot and will not.
Hillary Clinton:
We are working with our partners in the United Nations on new Security Council sanctions that will show Iran’s leaders that there are real consequences for their intransigence, that the only choice is to live up to their international obligations. Our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite. It is taking time to produce these sanctions, and we believe that time is a worthwhile investment for winning the broadest possible support for our efforts. But we will not compromise our commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring these weapons.
It probably Israel’s fault Hillary gave such a weak speech.
7% Israel thinks Obama is pro
Jennifer Rubin - 03.23.2010 - 1:02 PM
Some polling information suggests that Obama is not endearing himself to the Israeli public, nor making any headway with his housing announcement eruption, if the goal was to undermine Bibi Netanyahu’s government:
A lopsided plurality of 42 percent of Israelis view U.S. President Barack Obama as pro-Arab, and only seven percent see him as pro-Israel, according to a new Brain Base (Maagar Mochot) poll released on Monday. Thirty-four percent of the respondents are reserving judgment, with a neutral view. . . .
Nearly two-thirds said they support Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to continue to build in all of the capital city, while only 26 percent oppose it even though the majority also expressed the opinion that it will lead to more pressure from the United States.
A similar percentage of respondents believe that the Obama administration over-reacted to the announcement of progress in plans to build 1,600 new housing units in the Jewish neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo. Only five percent of the respondents said that the American criticism of the project would help the diplomatic process, while 59 percent said the criticism will hurt the peace initiative. . .
A plurality of one-third expressed dissatisfaction with the American efforts to deal with the nuclear threat, and only 26 percent were satisfied.
It would seem that Obama’s cozying up to the Palestinians has given the Israelis the idea that, well, Obama is cozying up to the Palestinians — at their expense. The result, I think, is that Israelis will find it difficult to trust this American president to look after their security, whether it comes to the Palestinians or to the Iranian nuclear threat.
Some polling information suggests that Obama is not endearing himself to the Israeli public, nor making any headway with his housing announcement eruption, if the goal was to undermine Bibi Netanyahu’s government:
A lopsided plurality of 42 percent of Israelis view U.S. President Barack Obama as pro-Arab, and only seven percent see him as pro-Israel, according to a new Brain Base (Maagar Mochot) poll released on Monday. Thirty-four percent of the respondents are reserving judgment, with a neutral view. . . .
Nearly two-thirds said they support Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to continue to build in all of the capital city, while only 26 percent oppose it even though the majority also expressed the opinion that it will lead to more pressure from the United States.
A similar percentage of respondents believe that the Obama administration over-reacted to the announcement of progress in plans to build 1,600 new housing units in the Jewish neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo. Only five percent of the respondents said that the American criticism of the project would help the diplomatic process, while 59 percent said the criticism will hurt the peace initiative. . .
A plurality of one-third expressed dissatisfaction with the American efforts to deal with the nuclear threat, and only 26 percent were satisfied.
It would seem that Obama’s cozying up to the Palestinians has given the Israelis the idea that, well, Obama is cozying up to the Palestinians — at their expense. The result, I think, is that Israelis will find it difficult to trust this American president to look after their security, whether it comes to the Palestinians or to the Iranian nuclear threat.
Obama is no Bush
No Substitute
Jennifer Rubin - 03.23.2010 - 5:07 PM
AP reports:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a warmer public reception from Congress than from the Obama administration, with a top Democrat and Republican joining Tuesday to welcome a leader who has refused to back down in a disagreement with the White House over Israeli housing expansion in a disputed part of Jerusalem. “We in Congress stand by Israel,” the leader of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, assured Netanyahu at an all-smiles appearance before the cameras. “In Congress we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel.”
Well, if there is a silver lining to the black cloud hanging over the U.S.-Israel relationship, it is the rather vibrant bipartisan support voiced toward Israel. Not only in the welcome today, but in the speechifying at AIPAC and in the letters to Obama, there has been widespread support from congressmen and senators for moving forward with crippling sanctions against Iran, as well as calls for the Obami to knock off their Israel bash-a-thon.
On one level, that is reassuring confirmation that Israel enjoys a reservoir of goodwill and affection, which transcends a single administration. But on another, it merely highlights how indispensable is a president whose administration that can maintain the U.S.-Israel relationship and who can understand that there is little to be gained and much to be lost by highlighting the differences between the two countries. Ultimately, it will be the president who chooses to implement “crippling” sanctions, or not; the president who authorizes the use of military force — if needed — against Iran, or not; the president who pursues regime change in, Iran or not; the president who tries to force unilateral concessions on Israel, or not; and the president who is regarded by Israelis as a trusted figure, or not.
The administration is big on platitudes — the relationship with Israel is “rock solid,” a nuclear armed Iran is “unacceptable,” etc. — but its actions are a different matter. To the extent that members of Congress and the American Jewish community are disturbed by what they have seen (i.e., bullying) and what they have not (i.e., a cogent policy with respect to Iran), it is incumbent on them to press the administration to align its rhetoric with its policies. But in the end, there’s just no substitute for a pro-Israel American president.
Interestingly, in an organization that is heavily Democratic, spontaneous applause broke out at the AIPAC session yesterday during a film montage when George W. Bush appeared confirming America’s affection for the Jewish state. Yes, many of us miss him. We have gone from arguably the most pro-Israel president to one of the least, and from one of the most skilled set of Middle East foreign-policy operatives to one of the least. And there is no escaping the fact that it matters. A lot.
Jennifer Rubin - 03.23.2010 - 5:07 PM
AP reports:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a warmer public reception from Congress than from the Obama administration, with a top Democrat and Republican joining Tuesday to welcome a leader who has refused to back down in a disagreement with the White House over Israeli housing expansion in a disputed part of Jerusalem. “We in Congress stand by Israel,” the leader of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, assured Netanyahu at an all-smiles appearance before the cameras. “In Congress we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel.”
Well, if there is a silver lining to the black cloud hanging over the U.S.-Israel relationship, it is the rather vibrant bipartisan support voiced toward Israel. Not only in the welcome today, but in the speechifying at AIPAC and in the letters to Obama, there has been widespread support from congressmen and senators for moving forward with crippling sanctions against Iran, as well as calls for the Obami to knock off their Israel bash-a-thon.
On one level, that is reassuring confirmation that Israel enjoys a reservoir of goodwill and affection, which transcends a single administration. But on another, it merely highlights how indispensable is a president whose administration that can maintain the U.S.-Israel relationship and who can understand that there is little to be gained and much to be lost by highlighting the differences between the two countries. Ultimately, it will be the president who chooses to implement “crippling” sanctions, or not; the president who authorizes the use of military force — if needed — against Iran, or not; the president who pursues regime change in, Iran or not; the president who tries to force unilateral concessions on Israel, or not; and the president who is regarded by Israelis as a trusted figure, or not.
The administration is big on platitudes — the relationship with Israel is “rock solid,” a nuclear armed Iran is “unacceptable,” etc. — but its actions are a different matter. To the extent that members of Congress and the American Jewish community are disturbed by what they have seen (i.e., bullying) and what they have not (i.e., a cogent policy with respect to Iran), it is incumbent on them to press the administration to align its rhetoric with its policies. But in the end, there’s just no substitute for a pro-Israel American president.
Interestingly, in an organization that is heavily Democratic, spontaneous applause broke out at the AIPAC session yesterday during a film montage when George W. Bush appeared confirming America’s affection for the Jewish state. Yes, many of us miss him. We have gone from arguably the most pro-Israel president to one of the least, and from one of the most skilled set of Middle East foreign-policy operatives to one of the least. And there is no escaping the fact that it matters. A lot.
Obama as turned on Israel (if he ever was pro?)
Will they still stick with Obama?
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
21/03/2010
Even his most ardent Jewish fans must be wondering about his support for Israel.
Last summer, Alan Dershowitz wrote “Has Obama Turned on Israel?” in The Wall Street Journal, a defense of Barack Obama’s policy toward Israel and, by extension, the numerous Jewish Democrats who had supported the president’s election and stuck by him despite a rocky first few months in office. Reacting to what he acknowledged was a “harsher approach toward Israel” than had been displayed during his campaign, Dershowitz insisted that despite disputes over settlements, the new administration was still solid on what was really important: safeguarding Israel’s security.
But as I wrote at the time in “Obama Turned on Israel but Dershowitz Won’t Turn on Obama” in Commentary magazine, rather than encouraging the Palestinians and their supporters in the Arab world to finally make peace, Obama’s decision to distance himself from Israel encouraged the foes of the Jewish state to dig in their heels and to wait for more American pressure. By picking a needless fight with Israel over settlements and expanding a long-standing disagreement over Jewish settlement in the West Bank into one about the right of Jews to build in Jerusalem, Obama changed the dynamic of the relationship into one characterized by distrust rather than friendship. That’s why Israelis consider him the least popular American president since Jimmy Carter.
BUT BY the start of Obama’s second year in office, the situation appeared brighter. His commitment to engagement with Iran had wasted a full year on fruitless diplomacy that merely replicated the failures of the Bush administration and gave Teheran another year to advance its nuclear ambitions before the West even considered serious steps to stop the regime. But the contempt with which Iran had treated his outstretched hand had appeared to sober Obama up about engagement. Having failed in an effort to topple the newly elected Israeli government led by Binyamin Netanyahu in 2009 and disappointed by the Palestinians’ refusal to talk peace, the president seemed to have finally grasped the limitations on his power to remake Middle East.
But optimism about Obama’s attitude toward Israel was dashed earlier as Washington seized on a poorly timed announcement of a housing project in Jerusalem during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden to set off a major confrontation with the Netanyahu government. By choosing to turn a minor gaffe into a major incident while ignoring far worse Palestinian provocations and specifically attempting to muscle Netanyahu into a pledge to stop building in east Jerusalem – something no previous administration had ever done – Obama showed that pressure on Israel remained high on his agenda. Having already reneged on pledges of American support for Israel’s holding on to parts of the West Bank and Jerusalem, the president is doubling down on his drive to bludgeon the Jewish state into further concessions without any hope of reciprocation from the Palestinians.
While it was apparent that one of Obama’s goals in this controversy was to have another go at either chasing Netanyahu from office or altering the composition of his coalition to slant it more to the left, Washington has placed the onus for the certain failure of peace talks on Netanyahu despite the fact that he has accepted the principle of a two-state solution, frozen building in the West Bank and sought to minimize interference with the lives of Palestinians. And by responding more forcefully and with greater anger to a minor dispute with its ally than to the endless atrocities and provocations committed by the Islamist regime in Teheran, Obama has sent a clear signal that no one need take his pledge to stop Iran seriously.
ALL OF this raises the question of what Obama’s Jewish supporters have to say now. While Dershowitz and other Jewish Democrats may still claim that statements by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials of America’s resolve to stand by Israel reflect the real nature of the relationship, the latest round of bitter and pointless controversy over Jerusalem orchestrated by Obama must leave even the most ardent fans of the president wondering.
Some on the Jewish left, like the J Street lobby, are happy to see the administration bashing the Netanyahu government because it hopes American pressure can reverse the outcome of the last election in which Israel’s left-wing parties crashed and burned. But while the majority of American Jews may not be particularly fond of Netanyahu or supportive of West Bank settlers, they, like the vast majority of Israelis, do not wish to see Jerusalem divided. Nor do they believe that Israel needs to be saved from itself.
Like most Americans, they understand that the Palestinians, both the moderates of Fatah and the extremists of Hamas who rule Gaza, are the real obstacles to peace, not a democratically elected government of Israel.
It remains to be seen how much damage the decision by the Obama-Clinton team to distance itself from Israel and to prevaricate on Iran will affect American Jewish support for the administration. The overwhelming majority of American Jews remain die-hard Democrats and it is unlikely that most will let even the most egregious betrayal on Israel affect their votes. But in a year when widespread dissatisfaction with the president’s policies will put his congressional supporters in electoral jeopardy this November, even a small slippage in Jewish support may prove crucial in several states. While health care and other domestic hot-button issues may dwarf concern over Israel’s fate, the impact of Obama’s disdain for the Jewish state could still turn out to be an issue that haunts him in the coming months and years.
Two years ago, Obama wooed American Jews at an AIPAC conference by pledging his devotion to the alliance with Israel. As AIPAC begins its annual conference this week, the distance that Obama’s administration has traveled from those pledges will be hard to ignore.
The writer is executive editor of Commentary magazine and a contributor to its blog at www.commentarymagazine.com.
jtobin@commentarymagazine.com
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
21/03/2010
Even his most ardent Jewish fans must be wondering about his support for Israel.
Last summer, Alan Dershowitz wrote “Has Obama Turned on Israel?” in The Wall Street Journal, a defense of Barack Obama’s policy toward Israel and, by extension, the numerous Jewish Democrats who had supported the president’s election and stuck by him despite a rocky first few months in office. Reacting to what he acknowledged was a “harsher approach toward Israel” than had been displayed during his campaign, Dershowitz insisted that despite disputes over settlements, the new administration was still solid on what was really important: safeguarding Israel’s security.
But as I wrote at the time in “Obama Turned on Israel but Dershowitz Won’t Turn on Obama” in Commentary magazine, rather than encouraging the Palestinians and their supporters in the Arab world to finally make peace, Obama’s decision to distance himself from Israel encouraged the foes of the Jewish state to dig in their heels and to wait for more American pressure. By picking a needless fight with Israel over settlements and expanding a long-standing disagreement over Jewish settlement in the West Bank into one about the right of Jews to build in Jerusalem, Obama changed the dynamic of the relationship into one characterized by distrust rather than friendship. That’s why Israelis consider him the least popular American president since Jimmy Carter.
BUT BY the start of Obama’s second year in office, the situation appeared brighter. His commitment to engagement with Iran had wasted a full year on fruitless diplomacy that merely replicated the failures of the Bush administration and gave Teheran another year to advance its nuclear ambitions before the West even considered serious steps to stop the regime. But the contempt with which Iran had treated his outstretched hand had appeared to sober Obama up about engagement. Having failed in an effort to topple the newly elected Israeli government led by Binyamin Netanyahu in 2009 and disappointed by the Palestinians’ refusal to talk peace, the president seemed to have finally grasped the limitations on his power to remake Middle East.
But optimism about Obama’s attitude toward Israel was dashed earlier as Washington seized on a poorly timed announcement of a housing project in Jerusalem during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden to set off a major confrontation with the Netanyahu government. By choosing to turn a minor gaffe into a major incident while ignoring far worse Palestinian provocations and specifically attempting to muscle Netanyahu into a pledge to stop building in east Jerusalem – something no previous administration had ever done – Obama showed that pressure on Israel remained high on his agenda. Having already reneged on pledges of American support for Israel’s holding on to parts of the West Bank and Jerusalem, the president is doubling down on his drive to bludgeon the Jewish state into further concessions without any hope of reciprocation from the Palestinians.
While it was apparent that one of Obama’s goals in this controversy was to have another go at either chasing Netanyahu from office or altering the composition of his coalition to slant it more to the left, Washington has placed the onus for the certain failure of peace talks on Netanyahu despite the fact that he has accepted the principle of a two-state solution, frozen building in the West Bank and sought to minimize interference with the lives of Palestinians. And by responding more forcefully and with greater anger to a minor dispute with its ally than to the endless atrocities and provocations committed by the Islamist regime in Teheran, Obama has sent a clear signal that no one need take his pledge to stop Iran seriously.
ALL OF this raises the question of what Obama’s Jewish supporters have to say now. While Dershowitz and other Jewish Democrats may still claim that statements by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials of America’s resolve to stand by Israel reflect the real nature of the relationship, the latest round of bitter and pointless controversy over Jerusalem orchestrated by Obama must leave even the most ardent fans of the president wondering.
Some on the Jewish left, like the J Street lobby, are happy to see the administration bashing the Netanyahu government because it hopes American pressure can reverse the outcome of the last election in which Israel’s left-wing parties crashed and burned. But while the majority of American Jews may not be particularly fond of Netanyahu or supportive of West Bank settlers, they, like the vast majority of Israelis, do not wish to see Jerusalem divided. Nor do they believe that Israel needs to be saved from itself.
Like most Americans, they understand that the Palestinians, both the moderates of Fatah and the extremists of Hamas who rule Gaza, are the real obstacles to peace, not a democratically elected government of Israel.
It remains to be seen how much damage the decision by the Obama-Clinton team to distance itself from Israel and to prevaricate on Iran will affect American Jewish support for the administration. The overwhelming majority of American Jews remain die-hard Democrats and it is unlikely that most will let even the most egregious betrayal on Israel affect their votes. But in a year when widespread dissatisfaction with the president’s policies will put his congressional supporters in electoral jeopardy this November, even a small slippage in Jewish support may prove crucial in several states. While health care and other domestic hot-button issues may dwarf concern over Israel’s fate, the impact of Obama’s disdain for the Jewish state could still turn out to be an issue that haunts him in the coming months and years.
Two years ago, Obama wooed American Jews at an AIPAC conference by pledging his devotion to the alliance with Israel. As AIPAC begins its annual conference this week, the distance that Obama’s administration has traveled from those pledges will be hard to ignore.
The writer is executive editor of Commentary magazine and a contributor to its blog at www.commentarymagazine.com.
jtobin@commentarymagazine.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
