Is Barack Obama “Good for the Jews”? (And How About Bill Clinton And Bush?)

Daled Amos
02 October '10

The attitude of any American president to Israel is a matter of concern because it affects our lives and security. Even this week, President Obama publicly exhorted Israel to extend the settlement freeze. Many Israelis found this interference insensitive and unwelcome. One would not ask if this president is a friend of Israel, because in his Cairo speech of 4 June 2009 he publicly revealed his preference. Just the same, one continuously asks whether Obama is “good for the Jews” (and Israel), even if the question is left unstated.

Normally, one would expect that any president first be good for America, but Obama has not convinced many Americans that this is the case. It is remarkable that a parallel questioning process is taking place in the U.S., where senior political commentators, such as Peggy Noonan, Dinesh D’Souza, Charles Krauthammer, Andy McCarthy, and Victor Davis Hanson, are also asking if the President is good for America, and they are not convinced. Their vantage point may be different, but if America and Israel share the same [Judeo-Christian] values, then the interests of the U.S. and of Israel should largely coincide. The historical record is mixed.

There is a need to examine the recent past, because the two previous American presidents who claim to be friends of the Jewish state have actually caused considerable harm.

(Read full post)

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A Fourth Approach to the Muslim World

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
21 July '10

American policy toward the Middle East has been traditionally split between the Stabilizers and the Radicals.

The Stabilizers were old foreign policy hands in the State Department, the Pentagon or the CIA, sometimes tied in with the oil industry. They advocated maintaining stability in the Middle East by putting American support behind "our friends", the dictators. The US would supply them with weapons and military backing in case they were ever invaded or overthrown, and in exchange we would have reliable access to oil. From the Eisenhower interventions to the Gulf War, the United States protected Arab Muslim tyrannies in order to maintain stability in the region.


The Radicals were often academics, part time journalists or old line leftists. They insisted that everything wrong in the Middle East was caused by Western colonialism and imperialism, and the healing could only begin when the United States stopped backing the tyrants and began backing Marxist and Islamist terrorists in taking over their respective countries. The Radicals believed that if the United States would only abandon the dictators and throw their support behind the Marxists and the Islamists, a wonderful new age would dawn in the Middle East.

Until the Carter Administration, the Stabilizers held sway over foreign policy. With Carter though, the Radicals had their first taste of power. Following the doctrine of the Radicals, the Carter Administration helped bring Islamists to power in Iran, and began providing aid to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. Its Green Belt strategy was focused on creating an alliance of Islamists to ally with the US against the Soviet Union. The real result was the same one you get when you try to breed poisonous snakes in order to get a bear off your land. You might succeed in getting rid of the bear, but now you'll have a whole other problem on your hands. That's exactly what happened with the US and the Islamists.

Neither the Stabilizers nor the Radicals were utilizing new ideas in their approach to the Middle East. The Stabilizers were echoing the British Empire's attempts to maintain control of the region through puppet sheikdoms and princedoms. The problem was that it hadn't worked too well for the British, who found themselves entangled in internal Arab and Muslim conflicts and coups. Like the British had before them, United States diplomats and oil company executives would cultivate a tyrant or two, only to discover that they were also completely untrustworthy. The House of Saud wound up seizing the same oil companies, and reversing the power relationship by doling out the oil on their terms, and using the money to begin the Islamization of the United States and Europe, while bribing half the foreign policy establishment to do it.

(Read full article)

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The Bush Letter" is U.S. Policy

JINSA
Report #: 1,003
05 July '10

As Prime Minister Netanyahu arrives for his 5th set of meetings with President Obama, the headline in one newspaper is, "Obama mum on Bush's borders for Israel," noting, "The White House has declined to publicly affirm commitments made by President Bush to Israel in 2004 on the final borders of the Jewish state."

Two points: In the April 2004 letter President Bush defines no borders for Israel; and the House and Senate passed concurrent resolutions adopting the President's formulation of the requirements of security for both Israel and the Palestinians.

The "borders" paragraph in the Bush letter reads:

As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion.

This puts a lie to the idea floating in the current administration that "everyone knows" what a "two-state solution" would look like and therefore the missing ingredient must be presidential pressure to make it happen - pressure on Israel, as it happens.

The Bush Administration clearly understood that the borders of the two states would NOT look like the 1949 armistice lines (the so-called "Green line" and never the "1967 borders"), and referred back to UNSC Resolution 242 which called for Israel to receive, "Secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."

(Read full article)

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Israel's Qualitative Military Edge, Part III: The Palestinians

JINSA
JINSA Report #: 958
22 January '10

In this decade, threats to Israel from the inner circle of its enemies changed in a qualitative way as Hamas and Hezbollah acquired arms and training from Iran-and in the case of the Palestinians, the United States.

Arafat's Fatah launched the "second intifada" in late 2000 primarily from the West Bank. Hamas was not a real factor and Gaza was relatively quiet. Israel was comfortable in the early years with the Bush Administration's approach to the Palestinian Authority (PA), for example, not meeting Arafat, the June 24th speech, the President's consistent support for Israel's need to defend itself from terror across the borders including 2002's Operation Defensive Shield and the construction of the Security Fence, the 2005 Gaza disengagement, the 2006 Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead against Hamas rocket attacks.

In what turned out to be a mistake of historic proportion, however, Israel and the United States agreed to allow Hamas to run in the 2006 Palestinian election, changing the Palestinian dynamic after the Palestinian civil war and the ouster of Fatah from Gaza. And it was the Bush administration-with Israeli acquiescence and assistance-that undertook training of Palestinian "security forces" under the leadership of an U.S. Army general.

It wasn't the first time.

(Read full report)

Related: QME, Part II: U.S. Arms Sales to the Arabs, and Help (?) for Israel
Qualitative Military Edge, Part I: What it is and Where it Went
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QME, Part II: U.S. Arms Sales to the Arabs, and Help (?) for Israel

JINSA
Report #: 957
22 January '10

[Correction to JINSA Report #956: The 1981 U.S. sale to Saudi Arabia was for E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) airplanes, not fighter jets.]

The concept of the Qualitative Military Edge (QME) failed to keep up with the changes in U.S. arms sales and training policy over the decades. It also failed to keep up with the changes in the regional picture of Israel and its adversaries-and the problems the adversaries themselves face. And finally, the Obama Administration posture toward Iran-including diplomatic overtures to the government and failure to obtain allied agreement on meaningful sanctions or other action-appears to have shifted from preventing Iranian acquisition of nuclear capabilities to deciding how to deal with a nuclear Iran. The implications for the security "edge" Israel requires in the face of continued Arab and Iranian rejection are huge.

During the "decade of the oughts" (as it appears to have been retroactively dubbed), the strategic alignment in the region changed from "everybody against Israel" to a "pro-Iran vs. anti-Iran" axis. Israel found itself on the same side of the strategic divide as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain and Lebanese democrats. On the other side are Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and, increasingly, Turkey. Iraq appears out of the picture, which is a very big change in historical terms. That doesn't mean Saudi Arabia likes Israel any better, but there is a clearer meeting of the minds on what threatens who and how. Saudi condemnation of Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon war and decision not to give even rhetorical support to Hamas during the Gaza war were demonstrations of the shift; as was passage of an Israeli warship through the Suez Canal during the summer.

(Read full report)

Related: Qualitative Military Edge, Part I: What it is and Where it Went
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Qualitative Military Edge, Part I: What it is and Where it Went

JINSA
Report #: 956
21 January '10

The Forward started it in December. Ha'aretz picked up the theme this month, writing, "The Bush administration violated security related agreements with Israel in which the U.S. promised to preserve the IDF's qualitative military edge (QME) over Arab armies, according to senior officials in the Obama administration and Israel," and suggesting that National Security Adviser Jim Jones's trip to Israel in mid-January was to discuss the QME. (Actually it was to push Israel into more pointless talks with Palestinians, who declined to cooperate.)

The objective appears to be PR for the Obama Administration, the standing of which is very, very low among Israelis. Trashing the previous administration is a favored tactic - but the truth is both less and more than it appears.

The concept of a QME is "iffy" to begin with;

The Bush Administration did several things that reduced Israel's capabilities against certain of its enemies, while strengthening Israel in other ways;

The Obama administration is repeating the mistakes, doubling down on them and adding its own new ones;

Israel, in very important ways, isn't protesting where it might.

The QME began as a Johnson Administration promise (not a treaty) to maintain Israel's ability to prevail over any reasonable combination of Arab forces in a non-nuclear war. The promise has been repeated by successive administrations-unquantified and unquantifiable. Weapons themselves can be counted, but Israel's edge over Arab armies was always more than that. It was-and remains-a combination of:

(Read full report)

Related: QME, Part II: U.S. Arms Sales to the Arabs, and Help (?) for Israel
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Let My People Go, So That They May Serve Me

Manhigut Yehudit
28 Tevet 5770
14 January '10

And G-d said to Moses, 'Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, and say unto him: Thus says G-d, the G-d of the Hebrews: Let My people go, that they may serve Me. (From this week's Torah portion, Va'eirah, Exodus 9:13)

"So that they may serve Me." This small phrase turns all the modern significance that we would like to attach to the story of the Exodus on its head. On the surface, the story is made for Hollywood (and it was!): It has the good guys and the bad guys. It has Moses, the underdog leader fighting for justice who defeats Pharaoh, the strong and evil king. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, the good guys live happily ever after, the bad guys drown in the sea, justice has been done, happy end.

There is just one small problem. That is not what is written. We were not redeemed from Egypt so that we could live happily ever after. We were redeemed from Egypt to serve the King of the world. Were it not for that fact, we would have remained there.

The famous verse from this week's Torah portion, "Let my people go" became the slogan of the struggle for Soviet Jewry trapped behind the Iron Curtain. It was a great struggle to be in; the Soviet Union was the bitter enemy of the United States and what could be nicer than fighting against the evil empire and dovetailing with the ethical and enlightened Western world?

The problem is that while we adopted the values of the US, the "good empire", we omitted the all-important phrase, "So that they may serve Me." All that we remembered was "Let my people go." Let my people go for the sake of freedom, for the sake of democracy, for the sake of Zionism, for the sake of the values of the Western world. Let my people go to the Pax Americana of which Israel is part.

But we – and the Americans – are in the process of collapse because we have forgotten that our purpose is to serve G-d.

We have lost our sense of justice for our existence and as a result, arrest warrants are already waiting for our elected government officials if they dare venture into Europe's capitals. In a sense, they are right. We did not leave Egypt to enjoy the desert climate and we did not establish the State of Israel because the world lacks democracies. Without the "serving G-d" factor, there is no significance to the Return to Zion – it only creates friction in the world. As far as the nations are concerned, if we do not carry the message that the world has been waiting for, we are extraneous – even a nuisance.

The Americans had a president who looked for meaning. He was inspired by the good Jew who helped to open the Iron Curtain. "Natan Sharansky's book, The Case for Democracy, is always at my bedside," said President Bush. And so, the American Nation followed Sharansky's message. But unfortunately, Sharansky's book did not include the connection between liberty and the service of G-d. The attempt to force democracy upon Iraq failed, naturally and the defeat of America was remolded into the image of Obama.

Shabbat Shalom
Moshe Feiglin
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Olmert's Offer

Yaacov Lozowick
Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
17 December 09

Olmert and Abbas, back in the days they were both prime ministers, met someting like 35 times (a lot). Their final meeting was on September 16th 2008, when Olmert made Abbas a proposal, and Abbas never returned. Ever since then further details have been seeping out. Yesterday Haaretz carried an interview with Abbas in which he confirmed much of what Olmert has been saying.

"The next day, we started talking about maps. Olmert showed me one map and I brought back one of ours. He showed me a new map and I brought back a map of ours. And so it went. We agreed that 1.9 percent would be with you and Olmert demanded 6.5 percent. It was a negotiation, we didn't complete it. As a shopper enters a store, that's how we held the talks."

Abbas also admits, in a back-handed sort of way, that the talks somehow stopped:

According to Abbas, a few days before Operation Cast Lead, he told then-U.S. president George W. Bush that despite extensive American efforts, the talks had not been completed. "He asked me if it would be all right if on January 3 we sent [chief negotiator] Saeb Erekat, and Israel would send an envoy to complete the talks. But a few days before the departure for Washington, Saeb called Shalom [Turgeman, Olmert's political adviser] and said the situation did not allow it. Everything got stuck."

Neat, isn't that? In mid-December ("a few days before Operation Cast Lead") Abbas confirmed to George Bush that the talks had stopped. Bush tried to restart them, but the Gaza operation interfered. Note, however, that what the Gaza operation interfered with was not the negotiations but rather an attempt by the American president to re-start them. Interventions by American presidents are usually acts of last resort, so the negotiations must have been very stuck well before Gaza - as Olmert has been saying all along, and Abbas now confirms.

(Continue article)

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the Promise to Abraham

The Bible quote is from the first of the five books of Moses. The King James translation renders the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 as:

"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."

In my recent American speaking tour I discovered that the folks who once believed that George W. was either demonic or stupid now have perfect faith in Obama as a glowing Messianic figure.

I thought I'd do a cartoon about President Obama's surprising string of failures, but these days any criticism of the politician from Chicago is a violation of Political Correctness ...and an invitation to being called a racist!!?!

So I did this cartoon about "playing it safe".

Your thoughts?

In a Tizzy Again

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
17 November 09

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is willing to show “restraint” in constructionin the West Bank, but will not accept any restriction on building in Jerusalem, senior government sources said Tuesday night. Their comments followed the Jerusalem Municipal Planning Committee’s approval of a plan to build some 900 new units in the southeastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo and the ensuing international objections.

The administration is unhinged again (isn’t it always?) over Jerusalem settlements:

“We are dismayed at the Jerusalem Planning Committee’s decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem,” [Robert] Gibbs said in a statement. ” At a time when we are working to re-launch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed. Neither party should engage in efforts or take actions that could unilaterally pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations. The U.S. also objects to other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes.”

“Our position is clear,” Gibbs continued. “The status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the parties.”

It’s probably poor form to cite “permanent status” issues since the administration has been on a mission to force Israel to cough up concessions on settlements up front, not as a final-status issue, as has been envisioned on the “road map.”

But this is evidence, certainly, if any more were needed, that the Obama administration has been spectacularly unsuccessful at getting either side in the inert “peace process” to do anything. The Bush administration, you will recall — criticized for being “too close” to Israel — was able to get the Israeli government to withdraw from Gaza, dismantle settlements, slow the growth of new ones and address the issue of checkpoints — not by threatening Israel but by building rapport and demonstrating that we consider Israel an ally, not an impediment to peace. Back in August, former Bush deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, who was instrumental in that approach, wrote :

The Obama administration has managed to win the mistrust of most Israelis, not just conservative politicians. Despite his great popularity in many parts of the world, in Israel Obama is now seen as no ally. A June poll found that just 6% of Israelis called him “pro-Israel,” when 88% had seen President George W. Bush that way. So the troubles between the U.S. and Israel are not fundamentally found in the personal relations among policy makers.

The deeper problem—and the more complex explanation of bilateral tensions—is that the Obama administration, while claiming to separate itself from the “ideologues” of the Bush administration in favor of a more balanced and realistic Middle East policy, is in fact following a highly ideological policy path. Its ability to cope with, indeed even to see clearly, the realities of life in Israel and the West Bank and the challenge of Iran to the region is compromised by the prism through which it analyzes events.

And then came months of more of the same ineffective haranguing from the Obami, topped off by the egregious rudeness shown the Israeli Prime Minister on his recent visit. The Obama team now sees the results of its own failed policy.

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