Ceren - Obama Re-Writes History on Bush and Jerusalem

Omri Ceren
Commentary/Contentions
16 August '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/08/16/obama-bush-jerusalem/

Now this is just getting silly. The Obama White House is gearing up for a Supreme Court case in which it will defend its refusal to list “Jerusalem, Israel” on the passports of Americans born in the Israeli capital. As part of its preparations the administration recently scrubbed all the captions on a White House photo gallery of Vice President Biden in the city, changing “Jerusalem, Israel” to “Jerusalem.” The optics of methodically erasing the word “Israel” from the White House webpage caused a predictable uproar.

Those who make it their business to rationalize White House hostility toward Israel were relieved, then, when the Washington Jewish Week’s Adam Kredo published an article claiming that the Bush administration had enforced an identical policy. Kredo cited a “search of the Bush White House’s archives” and photos of Laura Bush touring the Western Wall to conclude that the Bush White House webpage “never explicitly labeled [Jerusalem] as part of Israel.” Though he was otherwise unsparing in criticizing the White House’s “horrible, simply ridiculous… photo mistake,” Obama’s defenders latched on to his article anyway. The NJDC and J Street found particularly grating and obnoxious ways to pass along the article. You should read them because they’re about to become deeply embarrassing.

Elliot Abrams responded in a quote he gave to Jennifer Rubin, forcefully insisting that Kredo was “just wrong” and that the Bush White House “did not have a hard and fast rule that prohibited referring to Jerusalem” as part of Israel in documents and captions.

Basic Google searches are enough to show that Abrams is right and Obama’s defenders are flat wrong.

Sometimes Bush-era White House photos explicitly identified Jerusalem as being in Israel and sometimes they didn’t, just like sometimes they explicitly identified Tel Aviv as being in Israel and sometimes they didn’t. A naive “Jerusalem, Israel” Google search on the Bush White House archives is sufficient to turn up this 2002 photo of Vice President Cheney captioned as “a press briefing in Jerusalem, Israel.” It also turns up this photo labeled “Mrs. Laura Bush visits the Western Wall Tunnels… in Jerusalem, Israel.” That’s from the exact, precise, identical tour that Kredo linked to in order to “hammer home the point” that the Bush administration “never explicitly labeled [Jerusalem] as part of Israel.”

Getting beyond photo captions, Bush-era documents show that the previous White House was indeed able to correctly identify the city of Jerusalem as being inside the state of Israel. The record shows that the President even acknowledged that the Jerusalem consulate – the same one that won’t issue passports referencing “Jerusalem, Israel” – was located in Jerusalem, Israel. Bush’s statement nominating Jeffrey Feltman to be ambassador to Lebanon, for instance, explicitly described Feltman’s previous position as “Deputy Principal Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem, Israel.”

It gets worse for Obama’s defenders, though, than merely being demonstrably wrong. It turns out that while they were insisting that the Bush administration consistently refused to reference “Jerusalem, Israel,” the Obama State Department was busy scrubbing documents in which Bush administration referenced “Jerusalem, Israel.” Straight down the memory hole. That’s kind of amazing when you pause and think about it, no?

The “Jerusalem, Israel” captions and statements from the Bush-era White House are digitally archived and frozen, and so beyond the administration’s reach. But Bush-era State Department reports are stored on the Obama State Department’s servers. Two old documents in particular – the State Department’s FY 2002 and FY 2003 Performance and Accountability Reports – come up quickly in searches. When they were originally written they both had appendices identifying the location of the Jerusalem consulate as “Jerusalem, Israel.” Some time in the last two weeks that location was changed to “Jerusalem.” Whoever made the changes even went back and scrubbed the old “hard copy” PDFs. You can do the compare and contrast yourself. Click on these links for scrubbed versions of FY 2002 HTML, FY 2003 HTML, FY 2002 PDF, FY 2003 PDF, and on these links for cached original versions of FY 2002 HTML, FY 2003 HTML, FY 2002 PDF, FY 2003 PDF.

The Bush White House was simply not as hostile to Israel as the Obama administration. It simply did not engage in the same consistent, systematic efforts to undermine Israel’s diplomatic positions. Efforts to rewrite history, which at this point have become quite literal, won’t change that basic fact. Those who continue to grasp for pretexts to believe otherwise – and you really should go back to see the sneering smugness with which the NJDC and J Street approached this controversy – will continue to get embarrassed. Facts are not only stubborn things but, in a digital age, fairly easy for anyone to find.

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Wikileaks Contradicts Obama Administration on Iran

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
06 December '10

The recent disclosure by Wikileaks prove that the Obama Administration, and its water carrier J Street, were dead wrong in repeatedly asserting that the only way to get Arab support for tough policies toward Iran's nuclear weapons program is for Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank. There are good reasons for Israel to reach an agreement with the Palestinians leading to a two state solution, but garnering Arab support against Iran is not one of them. The Wikileaks proved beyond any doubt that Israel's Arab neighbors have a strong, independent basis for wanting to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons power.

The recently released cables establish that Saudi Arabia was pushing the United States to bomb Iranian nuclear sites; these cables never mentioned the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Nor were the Saudis alone in calling for the United States to cut off the "head of the snake." Other Arab nations were banging the drum for a military attack as well. Indeed there is evidence that the Saudis and Israelis—who have no diplomatic relations—have discussed military options against their common enemy.

Ever since the Obama Administration tried to put pressure on Israel by linking the end of the occupation to Iran, I have pointed out the absurdity of this linkage. But General David Petraeus, Secretary of State Robert Gates and Vice President Joe Biden have all insisted that the continuing occupation has made Arab states less willing to cooperate with the United States in preventing Iran from developing nuclear bombs. This party line view has been parroted, as usual, by various representatives of J Street.

Not only has this linkage never been true, but we now know that the Obama Administration has long been aware that the Arabs states are as anxious as Israel about Iran's nuclear ambitions. This information was contained in diplomatic cables that date back months, if not years. Why then would the Obama Administration deliberately mislead the public in regard so important a matter? The same question must be asked of the Bush Administration, which also mislead the public when it came to Iran by releasing the National Security Estimate in November 2007 that falsely concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program.

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To Get Arab Support on Iran, Take a Leaf from Bush Sr.

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
01 December '10

As Jennifer noted yesterday, the latest WikiLeaks revelations definitively refute Barack Obama’s “linkage” theory: that Israeli concessions to the Palestinians were necessary to persuade Arab states to oppose Iran’s nuclear program. But what the documents reveal about the profound strategic misconception behind this theory is frightening.

The list of Arab states urging America to bomb Iran, and the forcefulness with which they urged it, is astonishing. It includes Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates; virtually the only exception was Qatar. Clearly, no Israeli concessions were needed to persuade these countries that strong action against Iran was desirable.

But both Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush insisted that this behind-the-scenes urging wasn’t enough; they needed Arab states to go public with it. As CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid told UAE officials in 2007, “we need our friends to say that they stand with the Americans.”

If Bush had any strategy for achieving this goal, it doesn’t emerge from the reports I’ve seen. But Obama did: linkage. If America showed that it’s on the Arabs’ side by extracting Israeli concessions, the theory went, then Arab states would no longer be reluctant to stand publicly beside the U.S.

But the idea that “soft power” could solve a quintessentially hard-power problem is a profound misconception, because the issue wasn’t the Arabs’ view of Washington as too pro-Israel; that never stopped them from supporting America if it served their interests before.

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Why We Will Have to Watch This Movie Again

Rick Richman
Contentions/Commentary
26 August '10

As still another Israeli-Palestinian final-status negotiation approaches next week, one is struck by the similarities to the last one. It is Groundhog Day again.

Three years ago, President Bush convened a conference to initiate a one-year final-status negotiation. More than 40 countries attended to hear the president’s opening address. The Palestinian negotiator, Mahmoud Abbas, was the elected president of the Palestinian Authority (even though he ran essentially unopposed, as Hamas boycotted the election). The process was quarterbacked by the secretary of state, with monthly trips to the region. At the end of the year, there was still another offer of a Palestinian state, which the secretary of state personally urged Abbas to accept, and still another Palestinian rejection.

Next week, President Obama will convene a conference to initiate a one-year final-status negotiation, although only Egypt and Jordan will attend to hear the presidential dinner speech. Abbas will be back in the role of “president,” although his term expired 20 months ago. The parties will meet and hopefully agree on when and where to meet again. The process will be quarterbacked by the secretary of state’s representative, with monthly trips to the region. After a year, if the process lasts that long, there will be still another offer of a Palestinian state — as long as it is willing to recognize a Jewish one within defensible borders and end all claims — and still another Palestinian rejection.

Why are we doing this all over again? In a perceptive analysis entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, Again,” Stratfor’s George Friedman notes that enthusiasm among Arab allies for a Palestinian state is nil, although publicly they have to support it:

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We Judge By Actions - Not Words

Todd Warnick
Jerusalem Central
30 May '10

We measure President Obama not by Jewish Heritage Week, meetings with rabbis, Jewish members of Congress, lunch with Elie Wiesel, all culminating with an invitation to Bibi (what Jeffrey Goldberg calls "Operation Desert Schmooze") - but by his actions.

And in his first test since his PR blitz to bring the Jews back into the fold (coinciding of course with the impending November elections, which by all indications look to be a disaster for the Democrats), Obama failed miserably, sacrificing Israel on the altar of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference. Yossi Melman writes in Ha'aretz why 2010 is different than even 1995, when President Clinton allowed Israel to be specifically mentioned in the document of the conference in order that the universality of the NPT would be agreed upon.

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What Obama Has Done Wrong in the Middle East

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
21 May '10
Posted before Shabbat

In a fascinating interview, former Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, who oversaw George W. Bush’s Israel policy (remember — when we treated our ally with affection and respect?), details Obama’s errors regarding Israel (yes, it’s a lengthy interview), gives some insight into the Bush administration, and offers some predictions and suggestions. The program should be watched in full or the transcript read, but there are certain sections that are especially noteworthy.

Topping the list of Obama’s errors, Abrams explains, is the peace-process fixation:

First, I guess, and — and — most significant. They seem to think that peace between Israel and the Palestinians comes top-down. It is created someplace at a conference table in — in Taba or Camp David or Annapolis or Geneva. And that’s wrong. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians will be created between them, on the ground, in the real world. And it will depend on essentially what happens on the West Bank, on creating the institutions of Palestinian — self-government. And the fight against terrorism, I guess — critical things on the Palestinian side. So — concentrating on diplomacy, concentrating on the settlements is just wrong. That’s not what’s critical. What’s critical is what happens in the so — in the West Bank.

This leads to a glimpse inside the Bush White House:

I thought Annapolis was a mistake because — obviously, President Bush didn’t agree with me. I thought they were not going to reach an agreement. It seemed to me that — that if you look at the terms that were out there, neither Israeli nor Palestinian leaders were ready to accept those terms. I thought we were putting the emphasis in the wrong place, again, on conferences and conference tables and flying flags and all, rather than on the pretty — undramatic but critically important work of building institutions on the ground.

(In a prior interview with the Jerusalem Post, Abrams made clear that Condoleezza Rice pushed for the peace process, failing to provide the president with a full array of options.) It is a candid admission that presidents of both parties have fallen prey to peace-process-itis – the ailment characterized by a deep aversion to candidly assessing reality. But unlike the current president, Bush, to his credit, did not make a settlement freeze the cornerstone of his policy or escalate the issue of Jerusalem:

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Just for Show

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
07 April '10

Many savvy observers of the Obami assault on Israel have concluded that the fuss over the Jerusalem housing permit was concocted by the Obami to ingratiate themselves with the Palestinians, who were threatening to walk from the proximity talks. There is ample support for this theory, not the least of which is the prior positions of the three players in the Obama freak-out drama — Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and the president. The colorfully named Sultan Knish has compiled a useful bit of history that includes Biden’s co-sponsorship of Senate Resolutions 1322, 113, and 106 (between the years 1990 and 1995):

Biden co-sponsored three Senate resolution, all three of which insisted that Jerusalem should remain Israel’s undivided capital. One of which insisted that it was vital for the peace process that Jerusalem should be affirmed by US policy as Israel’s undivided capital. So naturally, like any good politician, he was insulted by Israel taking him at his word. To argue that Biden was gravely insulted by Israel, is to argue that he was insulted by the policies he himself supported.

Not just passively supported, but co-sponsored in three Senate resolutions which repeatedly stated that these were meant to be the policy of the United States.

But of course the hypocrisy train doesn’t just stop at Joe Biden Station.

(Read full post)
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Is Netanyahu ‘Apologizing to the Obama Administration’?

Part II of a two-part interview with Moshe Arens — former Israeli defense minister, foreign minister, and ambassador to the U.S. (Read Part I here.)


Ruthie Blum Leibowitz
Pajamasmedia.com
04 April '10
Posted before Chag
The concluding half of Ruthie Blum Leibowitz’s interview with Moshe Arens — former Israeli defense minister, foreign minister, and ambassador to the U.S.

Q: Are the Obama administration’s policies towards Israel a total about-face from the position of the Bush administration, which maintained there was a global struggle going on between the West and radical Islam, and that the Palestinian conflict belonged to that struggle? The current administration seems to be asserting that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only a phenomenon in and of itself, but that solving it is necessary to dealing with the rest of the world.

A: The major difference, again, is that this administration is taking its disagreements with the Israeli government public. If we look back at the history of U.S.-Israel relations, the last time we can discern this kind of a breach in the discourse was during the Eisenhower years. That was right after the Sinai Campaign, when Secretary of State [John Foster] Dulles publicly pressured Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion into moving the Israeli army out of the Sinai and the Gaza Strip, though Ben-Gurion was initially hesitant. The Eisenhower administration made no bones about its views on that subject, and hinted at additional pressures that might be forthcoming if Israel did not accept. That was in 1957. Here we are 53 years later.

Q: Why didn’t you mention the Carter administration in this context, as so many commentators have been doing of late?

A: Well, I don’t think we had a serious rift with the Carter administration, though we certainly might have had one, had Prime Minister Menachem Begin not accepted the terms that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat insisted on during negotiations at Camp David. President Carter might very well have come down on Sadat’s side. But we never got to that point, and in the final analysis, Carter was quite happy with the fact that Begin, after some convincing and maybe a little bit of discrete pressure, accepted the condition that there be a total withdrawal of Israeli forces and removal of Israeli settlements from the Sinai.

Q: Can Netanyahu be compared to Begin in this respect? After all, at the time, Begin seemed to be the least likely prime minister to give away territory. Netanyahu, today, is considered by many to be “intransigent.” Will the upshot in this case be similar? Will Netanyahu ultimately agree to withdraw to the 1967 borders?

A: It’s very unlikely. And the analogy is not entirely apt. Begin was quite doctrinaire, and what made it possible for him to agree to a total withdrawal from the Sinai was his view that it was not really part of the land of Israel. The fact is that he was not prepared to give an inch of the Gaza Strip, because he said it was part of the land of Israel.

(Read full interview)
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The Vision Thing

Emmanuel Navon
For The Sake Of Zion
03 March '10

The man whom George W. Bush used to dismissingly call “The Eye Doctor” seems to be doing fine without glasses. Bashar al-Assad, an ophthalmologist who inherited his father’s hereditary job only because his older brother was killed in a car accident, has turned the tables on the United States. Five years ago, he complied with the American injunction to pull his troops out of Lebanon. Today, he is publicly humiliating the United States.

In February 2005, the US withdrew its ambassador to Syria following the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Assad’s involvement in Hariri’s murder was so obvious that former French President Jacques Chirac, a personal friend of Hariri (and long-term guest in his Paris apartment), has been boycotting Assad ever since. By recalling its ambassador, the US was also expressing its discontent with the fact that Syria hosts and shields Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, transfers weapons from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, lets terrorists crossing into Iraq, supports Iran’s foreign policy goals, and cooperates with Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear capabilities (concerns about Syria’s suspected nuclear program were brought to the world’s attention by the Israeli bombing of an alleged nuclear facility in eastern Syria in 2007).

Last month, five years exactly after the scolding of the Bush Administration, President Obama nominated Robert Ford as the new US Ambassador to Syria. The rationale of the current US Administration is that Assad can be sweet-talked into trading his alliance with Iran for a deal with America. Obama’s gamble has produced immediate results, but not the expected ones. Shortly after the nomination of Ambassador Ford, Ahmadinejad paid an official and pompous visit to Damascus (where he also met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah). Baffled, Hillary Clinton asked Assad why he was doing the opposite of what her government’s policy was supposed to produce. Assad responded as follows: “We have a hard time understanding Clinton, either because of a translation problem or because of our limited capabilities.” Hillary Clinton is being pushed around by Middle Eastern machos and America is being ridiculed.

(Read full post)
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The limits of American engagement with Iran

Elie Fawaz
NOW Lebanon
12 February '10

There is nothing solid to the eloquent words US President Barack Obama uses to address the many crises his country is experiencing, especially in the Middle East. By now it has become obvious for enemies and allies of the United States alike that this American administration has no foreign policy at all, and this is a luxury that the United States cannot afford, especially when it comes to the Middle East – the home of 70% of the oil reserves in the world – unless it has decided to cease being the world super power and is instead gunning for the Miss Congeniality title.

Obviously the myriad envoys coming to the region with the mantra of engagement without coercion has sent the wrong message and has so far led the region to the edge of a destructive war. This became clear during the American presidential campaign, when America’s enemies and allies understood that an Obama victory would mean the undoing of everything George W. Bush did for the past eight years, regardless of the consequences.

The enemies of the United States had to be a little patient, the allies weary. Undoing Bush’s policies in the Middle East meant giving the region up to the next strongest power. It happened in the 1980s, when Iran and its allies decided to push America out of the region successfully, but with the small difference that at the time America’s allies were by far stronger, and Iran wasn’t going nuclear.

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The chronologically-challenged Stephen Walt

Martin Kramer
Inside the Middle East/JPost
11 February '10

In the past, I've demolished Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's claim that Israel and its friends drove the United States to war with Iraq. I did it when they published their article, and did it again when they published their book, The Israel Lobby. It's a conspiracy theory, pure and simple. And because Walt is a conspiracy theorist, he does what they all do: he rips evidence out of context.

Here's his latest grasp at a straw: his claim that Tony Blair has "revealed" that "Israel officials were involved in those discussions" on Iraq held between Blair and George Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002. Walt brings as evidence this quote from Blair's testimony to the UK commission investigating the Iraq war:

As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this."

Walt's conclusion: "Blair is acknowledging that concerns about Israel were part of the equation, and that the Israeli government was being actively consulted in the planning for the war." Walt goes on to declare that "more evidence of their influence [of Israel and the Israel lobby] on the decision for war will leak out," and that "Blair's testimony is evidence of that process at work."

When people who don't know much about the Middle East, like Stephen Walt, pose as experts, they make basic mistakes of chronology. So let me remind him of exactly what coincided with the Crawford meeting of April 6-7, 2002.

(Read full article)
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Ban Ki-Moon vs. George W. Bush

FresnoZionism.org
30 November 09

Could he be more wrong?

Palestinian statehood is a “vital” component necessary for regional peace, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said, in a message to mark Monday’s annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

I’ve only recently touched on the UN, so I won’t get off on that again. I do want to mention that the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” is held on November 29 for a reason. In the words of Our United Nations,

In 1977, the General Assembly called for the annual observance of 29 November as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (resolution 32/40 B). On that day, in 1947, the Assembly adopted the resolution on the partition of Palestine (resolution 181 (II)).

So I suppose this ’solidarity’ is their way of making up for what they must view as the terrible mistake of 1947!

Just two years before, on November 10, 1975, the UN had passed the notorious resolution 3379, which asserted that Zionism was a form of racism. The sponsors of that resolution also must have had a keen sense of the significance of dates, since November 10 was also the day, 37 years before, of Kristallnacht, the day that marked the beginning of the Nazi Final Solution.

Back to Ban Ki-Moon’s remarks. It’s obvious that Palestinian statehood, far from being vital to peace, would be a cause for war.

(Read full article)

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