A Special Relationship- Jews, America and Israel

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
12 July '10

(Another excellent piece from Sultan Knish)

Three months after Obama deliberately snubbed Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel was invited back to put on a good show of friendship before the midterm elections. There were smiles all around, reassuring sound bites and even some waving. The idea was to assure everyone that things were back to normal. At least until the mid-term elections delivers the Jewish vote. Just another cynical round in a very cynical administration.


The re-invitation was a concession that Obama's original approach of publicly attacking Israel in order to force concessions was not the best strategy. Not only did Obama fail to convince the American people that Israel had gravely insulted them by approving one stage of a housing project in its own capitol, while Joe Biden happened to be in town-- but the backlash that was generated even from some of his own supporters, such as Ed Koch, actually helped lower Obama's own poll numbers. But all the smiles and friendly waves don't mean that anything is fixed, it just means that the Clintonites have won the argument.

The argument between the radical voices that Obama brought in, like Samantha Power or Susan Rice, and the Clinton Administration veterans, including Rahm and Hillary Clinton herself, was over the best way to bring Israel to heel. The radicals wanted a direct confrontation, the Clintonites wanted the old policy of friendly overtones, with harsh undertones. In public everyone keeps smiling, in private everything gets ugly real fast. The re-invitation was a triumph of style over substance, the substance of the administration's policies have not changed. They are just being moderated by a desire to avoid alienating Jewish Democrats and increasing Netanyahu's popularity at home.

It was Bill Clinton who had mastered the "friendly overtones/ugly undertones" school of diplomacy toward Israel. No President had done a better job of building a pro-Israel image, while ruthlessly pressuring and intimidating Netanyahu in private into making concessions, and finally using his "experts" to overthrow his government. It's a given that Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel are highly familiar with that game plan, and are eager to run it again. The re-invitation just means that they'll have the chance to do it, by pressuring Netanyahu into signing an agreement with whoever's around to run Fatah, after the shooting stops.

(Read full article)

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