Question. Is it wrong to let Israel make decisions for itself? - by Jonathan S. Tobin

Peace cannot be imposed by the United States. If it does ever happen, it will only be when the Palestinians realize that Israel will not be handed over to them on a silver platter in pieces.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
23 April '20..

In principle, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s answer to a question about Israel’s new coalition government seems unexceptionable. The agreement signed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz allows for a vote in the upcoming months about extending Israeli sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, including settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley. As far as Pompeo is concerned, whether or not they do so is up to the Israelis.

According to Reuters, Pompeo said, “As for the annexation of the West Bank, the Israelis will ultimately make those decisions. That’s an Israeli decision. And we will work closely with them to share with them our views of this in [a] private setting.”

That wouldn’t have been the reaction from President Barack Obama’s State Department, nor is it fair to say from the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush or even Ronald Reagan. They would have all fervently and publicly opposed any Israeli talk of annexation, let alone plans to implement the idea.

The difference between the administration of President Donald Trump, which put forward a plan for the Middle East earlier this year that envisioned Israeli holding onto approximately 30 percent of the West Bank in the context of a scheme that would have also allowed the creation of an independent, though demilitarized Palestinian state, is not just about the contours of a solution to the conflict.

What really sets Trump and Pompeo apart from their predecessors is that the current American government doesn’t think that it is entitled to dictate policy to the Israelis. And it is this unwillingness to give orders to the Jewish state that really shocks critics of Israel and the foreign-policy establishment.

Obama wasn’t reticent about expressing his feelings about the relationship between the two countries. Though at times he paid lip service to the strong affection felt by the overwhelming majority of Americans for Israel, he never bothered to conceal his disdain for any notion that the Israelis should be treated as equals. He was explicit about believing that he had the right to “save Israel from itself” since the policies adopted by its democratically elected government were not in accord with his own unrealistic vision of how to achieve peace. He believed he had the right to override the will of the Israeli people as expressed at the ballot box, and many of his American Jewish adherents agreed with him about that.

(Continue to Full Column)

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Israel and the indications that we have finally moved past Obama’s legacy - by Caroline Glick

Where we are going is still unknown. But what is certain is that by going after the sources of the continued malignancy of the conflict and pushing back against the lies that informed Obama’s policies, both Israel and the US have abandoned them.

Caroline Glick..
Carolineglick.com..
17 June '17..
Link: http://carolineglick.com/burying-saddams-legacy/

It may very well be that this week was the week that Israel and the US put to rest former president Barack Obama’s policies and positions on Israel and the Palestinians.

If so, the move was made despite the best efforts of Obama’s team to convince the Trump administration to maintain them.

The details of Obama’s policies and positions have been revealed in recent weeks in a series of articles published in Haaretz regarding Obama’s secretary of state John Kerry’s failed peacemaking efforts, which ended in 2014.

The articles reported segments of two drafts of a US framework for a final peace treaty between the PLO and Israel. The drafts were created in February and March 2014.

The article series is predicated on the assumption that Kerry and his team were on the precipice of a historic breakthrough between PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. But a close reading of the documents shows that the opposite was the case.

There are two reasons that Kerry had no prospects for reaching a deal.

First, he, Obama and their advisers were too hostile to Israel and its citizens to ever convince Netanyahu that Israel’s interests would be secured.

A February 2014 draft framework agreement, which was based on conversations Kerry and his team held with Netanyahu and his advisers, makes this clear. The draft includes Netanyahu’s demand that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria not annexed to Israel would remain “in place” after the implementation of a peace deal, and presumably, become towns in the future Palestinian state.

In other words, Netanyahu demanded that the Israelis in Judea and Samaria whose towns would be located in the territory of “Palestine” would enjoy the same rights and protections as Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy.

Kerry and his team would have none of it. The February draft agreement notes, “[US] negotiators need to check with PM [Netanyahu] on whether he wants to [maintain this position]… They believe that if so, he will push strongly for ‘in place.’ ‘In place’ is inconsistent with US policy and therefore unacceptable to us as well as the Palestinians.”

In other words, the position of the Obama administration was that all Israelis living in areas that would become part of the Palestinian state must be forcibly removed from their homes and communities.

Haaretz reporters Barak Ravid and Amir Tibon recalled that in previous rounds of negotiations, the Palestinians – unlike the Obama administration – had not rejected this Israeli position out of hand. That is, in demanding the mass expulsion of Israeli Jews from their homes, the administration adopted a policy more extreme than the PLO.

(Excellent) Donald al-Trump - by Vic Rosenthal

...Now I think things are moving into a new phase, and America’s Middle Eastern president, Donald Trump, is more a symptom than a cause. It’s a new millennium, both literally and figuratively. I can’t predict whether it will be better or worse, but it will definitely be different.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
13 February '17..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2017/02/donald-al-trump/

Trump’s recent interview with Israel Hayom has got a lot of people upset. Waffling on moving the embassy? Settlements are “not a good thing for peace?” A deal with the Palestinians “can be made and should be made?” Where is the Trump that promised to move the embassy on his first day in office? Where is the one who said that settlements are not an obstacle to peace?

Calm down.

What Americans don’t understand, and what I am surprised that many Israelis have been slow to realize, is one simple fact about Trump: he is a Middle Eastern leader.

He is not a Dwight Eisenhower or a Harry Truman or even a Barack Obama. Although born in New York, he operates like a son of Cairo or Baghdad. This can be a bad thing or a good thing, depending on who you are and what you want from the American president.

Americans are upset that Trump has a tendency to stretch or even totally invert the truth. “He’s a liar, they shout.” Nonsense. He simply has a Middle Eastern theory of truth. There is no standard of objective reality in the Middle East; truth is what comports with the narrative. So Mahmoud Abbas and friends say and believe that there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and that the “Palestinian people” are descended from the ancient Canaanites, and Jesus was a “Palestinian.” Things like historicity are Western ideas that don’t fly in the Middle East. Many Americans strongly support the Palestinian cause despite this. So why do they have so much trouble with Trump?

Trump’s declarations of his intentions often become, to use a Nixonian phrase, “inoperative.” Yes, he promised to do xyz but instead he does abc. And then he says “that’s what I said I was going to do all along.” Americans sputter and fume, but that is because they don’t understand that in the Middle East, a statement of intention is made only for its immediate effect. A promise is more an expression of the leader’s mood, feelings and desires, and an attempt to influence his listeners (although Middle Easterners understand this and are only slightly affected) than what a Westerner calls a “promise.” No obligation is incurred, and everyone knows it.

Trump’s remarks about Israel are aimed at various targets — in the US, in Israel and in the Arab world. Words in the Middle East are not primarily descriptions of facts or intentions. Words are tools or even weapons. There is a simple rule for understanding Middle Easterners: don’t look at what they say, look at what they do.

Benjamin Netanyahu has met with many Middle Eastern leaders and understands this. I expect that his meeting with Trump this week will be fruitful. Netanyahu will try to get a sense of what Trump actually wants and how he will act, and he will convey Israel’s priorities (Iran, Iran and Iran) to him.

Now I want to turn to America.

Know why he’ll get the ambassador he wants? Because he will be the president. - by Jonathan Tobin

...Suffice it to say that if you believe the current Israel-Palestinian impasse is a stain on Israel’s moral position in the region, you are free to feast on your own self-righteousness, but your perspective is astoundingly askew. Just to take this week alone, there’s a genocide going on about 300 miles to Israel’s northeast, a nightmarish pseudo-caliphate is enslaving women another 200 miles to the east of that, and a barbaric theocracy with a “destroy the Jewish state” doctrine is amassing power another 400 miles further east of that. The idea that Israel, by comparison to its region, is morally compromised is nothing less than unworldly preening.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
16 December '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/david-friedman-ambassador-has-left-the-building/

“Personnel is policy.” That’s one of the great cliches of Washington staffing, and we have an example of its truth in Donald Trump’s nomination of the New York bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman to be his ambassador to Israel.

Much will be made of the blunt Friedman’s very harsh words about left-wing Jewish groups and about President Obama, and these will be used in an effort to derail his nomination. Friedman wrote an op-ed earlier this year likening JStreet to the kapos—the Jews who worked for the Nazis policing their own people. It was wrong of him to do so, but it’s something in the heat of a rhetorical moment I myself have done in relation to a disgusting Jewish cartoonist who uses images out of Der Sturmer to portray Israelis he doesn’t like, so I can appreciate Friedman’s emotional impulse. That impulse comes from a deep sense of anger at Jews who use their Jewishness as a shield and weapon simultaneously to delegitimize the democratic actions of a democratic Jewish state. It is about defending your people against those who you believe are siding with your people’s enemies. In the case of JStreet, Friedman’s feelings are merited even if his analogy was wrong. (And just as I apologized for my use of the term “kapo,” he’d probably do himself some good if he said he’d gone too far in that case—which would, by the way, give him a second shot at explaining why JStreet is egregious in front of a far larger audience.)

Other arguments will be advanced against his nomination, like the fact that Friedman has no diplomatic experience. This is disingenuous. Every administration appoints ambassadors with no diplomatic experience, and aside from generalized bitching, official Washington accepts the practice without complaint. Besides which, one of the ways people get diplomatic experience is to become appointed diplomats. What this really means is that Friedman is neither a member of the foreign service or of the foreign-policy establishment. Well, big deal. Trump is the president and he need not find his Israeli ambassador from the ranks of the permanent State Department bureaucracy or from the membership list of the Council on Foreign Relations. And unlike many ambassadorial appointments, he’s not being rewarded for his financial support.

Trump, the EU crack-up and Israel - by Caroline Glick

...In the final analysis, Trump’s rise in America and the rise of the populists in Europe is yet another indication of the West’s growing identity crisis fueled by its economic, social, military and cultural weakness. Israel needs to read the writing on the wall and act appropriately lest we become a casualty of that identity crisis.

Caroline Glick..
Column One/JPost..
25 February '16..

After smashing back-to-back victories in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries and the Nevada caucuses, going into next week’s Super Tuesday contests in 12 states, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump looks increasingly unbeatable.

What accounts for the billionaire populist’s success? And if Trump does become the next US president, what sort of leader will the former reality television star be? Trump is popular because he has a rare ability to channel the deep-seated frustrations that much of the American public harbors toward its political and cultural elites.

Trump’s presidential bid isn’t based on specific, defined economic or foreign policy platforms or plans. Indeed, it isn’t clear that he even has any.

Trump’s campaign is based on his capacity to resonate two deeply felt frustrations harbored by a large cross-section of American citizens.

As The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger explained recently, a very large group of Americans is frustrated – or enraged – by the intellectual and social terror exercised upon them by the commissars of political correctness.

Trump’s support levels rise each time he says something “politically incorrect.” His candidacy took off last summer when he promised to build a wall along the Mexican border. It rose again last November when, following the Islamic massacre in Paris, he said that if elected he will ban Muslim immigration to the US.

The many millions of Americans who are sick of being called racist, chauvinist, homophobic, privileged or extremist every time they breathe feel that in Trump they have found their voice.

Then there is that gnawing sense that under Obama, America has been transformed from history’s greatest winner into history’s biggest sucker.

Trump’s continuous exposition on his superhuman deal-making talents speaks to this fear.

Trump’s ability to viscerally connect to the deep-seated concerns of American voters and assuage them frees him from the normal campaign requirement of developing plans to accomplish his campaign promises.

Trump’s supporters don’t care that his economic policies contradict one another. They don’t care that his foreign policy declarations are a muddle of contradictions.

They hate the establishment and they want to believe him.

This then brings us to the question of how a president Donald Trump would govern.

Because he knows how to viscerally connect to the public, Trump will undoubtedly be a popular president. But since he has no clear philosophical or ideological underpinning, his policies will likely be inconsistent and opportunistic.

In this, a Trump presidency will be a stark contrast to Obama’s hyper-ideological tenure in office.

So, too, his presidency will be a marked contrast to a similarly ideologically driven Clinton or Sanders administration, since both will more or less continue to enact Obama’s domestic and foreign policies.

The US is far from the only country steeped in uncertainty and frustration today.

Today, the peoples of Western Europe are behaving much like the Americans in their increased rejection of the political and cultural elites. Like Trump’s growing band of supporters, Western Europeans are increasingly embracing populists.

Whether these leaders come from the Right or the Left, they all make a similar pledge to restore their nations to a previous glory.

These promises are based as well on a common rejection of the European Union. Like their voters, populist European politicians believe that the EU is a bureaucratic monstrosity that has pulverized and seeks to blot out their national characters while it seizes their national sovereignty.

Due to this growing popular opposition to the EU, establishment leaders throughout Western Europe find themselves fighting for their political survival. Whether their desire to exit the EU owes to its open borders policies in the face of massive Muslim immigration or to the euro debt crisis, with each passing month, the very concept of a unified Europe loses its appeal for more and more Europeans.

On June 23, this growing disenchantment is liable to bring about the beginning of the EU’s breakup. That day, British voters will determine whether or not the United Kingdom will remain in the EU.

Popular London Mayor and Conservative MP Boris Johnson is now leading the campaign calling for Britain to leave the EU against the will of Prime Minister David Cameron and the Conservative party establishment.

In recent days, several commentators have claimed that Johnson is Britain’s Donald Trump.

Like Trump, Johnson is able to tap into deep-seated public dissatisfaction with the political and cultural elites and serve as a voice for the disaffected.

If Johnson is able to convince a majority of British voters to support an exit from the EU, then several other EU member states are likely to follow in Britain’s wake.

The exit of states from the EU will cause a political and economic upheaval in Europe with repercussions far beyond its borders. Just as a Trump presidency will usher in an era of high turbulence and uncertainty in US economic and foreign policies, so a post-breakup EU and Western Europe will replace Brussels’ consistent policies with policies that are more varied, and unstable.

For Israel, instability is not necessarily a bad thing. For the past several years, we have consistently suffered under the stable, unswerving anti-Israel policies of both the EU and the Obama administration.

Our inability to influence these policies was brought home last week with the government’s announcement that it is renewing Israel’s diplomatic dialogue with the EU.

As Israel Looks Beyond America - by Bret Stephens

...But a great power that cannot recognize the dilemmas of its allies soon becomes useless as an ally, and it becomes intolerable if it then turns its strategic ignorance into a moral sermon. More than one Israeli official I spoke with recalled that the country managed to survive the years before 1967 without America’s strategic backing, and if necessary it could do so again. Nations that must survive typically do. The more important question is how much credibility the U.S. can afford to squander before the loss becomes irrecoverable.

Bret Stephens..
Wall Street Journal..
15 February '16..

Talk to Israelis about the United States these days and you will provoke a physical reaction. Barack Obama is an eye roll. John Kerry is a grimace. The administration’s conduct of regional policy is a slow, sad shake of the head. The current state of the presidential race makes for a full-blown shudder. The Israeli rundown of the candidates goes roughly as follows: “Hillary—she doesn’t like us.” “Cruz—I don’t like him.” “Rubio—is he done for?” “Sanders—oy vey.” “Trump—omigod.”

As for Israel’s own troubles—a continuing Palestinian campaign of stabbings; evidence that Hamas is rebuilding its network of terror tunnels under the Gaza border and wants to restart the 2014 war; more than 100,000 rockets and guided missiles in the hands of Hezbollah—that’s just the Middle East being itself. It’s the U.S. not being itself that is the real novelty, and is forcing Israel to adjust.

I’ve spent the better part of a week talking to senior officials, journalists, intellectuals and politicians from across Israel’s political spectrum. None of it was on the record, but the consistent theme is that, while the Jewish state still needs the U.S., especially in the form of military aid, it also needs to diversify its strategic partnerships. This may yet turn out to be the historic achievement of Benjamin Netanyahu’s long reign as prime minister.

On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon publicly shook hands with former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal at the Munich Security Conference. In January, Israeli cabinet member Yuval Steinitz made a trip to Abu Dhabi, where Israel is opening an office at a renewable-energy association. Turkey is patching up ties with Israel. In June, Jerusalem and Riyadh went public with the strategic talks between them. In March, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi told the Washington Post that he speaks to Mr. Netanyahu “a lot.”

This de facto Sunni-Jewish alliance amounts to what might be called the coalition of the disenchanted; states that have lost faith in America’s promises. Israel is also reinventing its ties to the aspiring Startup Nations, countries that want to develop their own innovation cultures.

In October, Israel hosted Indian President Pranab Mukherjee for a three-day state visit; New Delhi, once a paragon of the nonaligned movement that didn’t have diplomatic ties to Israel for four decades, is about to spend $3 billion on Israeli arms. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is personally close to Mr. Netanyahu, sees Israel as a model for economic reinvention. Chinese investment in Israel hit $2.7 billion last year, up from $70 million in 2010. In 2014, Israel’s exports to the Far East for the first time exceeded those to the U.S.

Thanks Dan. As usual, the Jews are to blame

...Ambassador Shapiro, please tell Secretary Kerry that the British Mandate for Palestine ended more than 67 years ago and the White Paper is a dusty archive item, historical evidence of the global effort (including by the U.S.) to prevent the Jewish people's return to Zion. Jewish settlement throughout our homeland is not the problem, it is the solution. Once you understand this, the world will be a safer place.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
19 January '16..

It is worth reading the speech U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro gave at the Institute for National Security Studies conference on Monday. Just hours after we buried Dafna Meir, may God avenge her blood, Shapiro delivered a slap to our faces in a self-aggrandizing address in which he highlighted the wonderful accomplishments that were made possible by "America's global leadership" in recent years. Shapiro said the Iran nuclear deal made "all of us safer."

I hope he is right, but I highly doubt it. As a king of Israel once said, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch."

Shapiro praised U.S. policy in Syria and Iraq and vowed that the Islamic State group would ultimately be defeated. Tell that to hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have been murdered and the millions who have been displaced. Tell that to the women who have been raped and sold into sex slavery and to the Christians who have been forced to convert to Islam. Is this the "global leadership" to which you referred, Ambassador Shapiro?

The real treat came in the middle of the speech.

"We are concerned and perplexed by Israel's strategy on settlements," Shapiro said, adding, "Settler outposts are being legalized -- despite earlier pledges to the United States not to do so." In that line, he was referring to Gush Etzion. He then topped it off by saying, "At times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians."

If you think Israel is practicing apartheid, Ambassador Shapiro, just say so outright, as that was the grave implication of your words. Parts of the Left in both Israel and the U.S. have already crossed that line.

Shapiro asked, "What is Israel's plan for resolving the conflict?" (Well, we'll contain the conflict for now and deepen our roots in the land of our forefathers. Thanks for asking, Mr. Ambassador!) Can Shapiro tell us what America's plan is? Secretary of State John Kerry visited here countless times and came up with nothing. Does the U.S. want us to hand over the heart of our homeland to a weak Palestinian entity that would soon be taken over by Islamic madmen?

Obama’s constitutional overreach… and Israel - by Caroline Glick

...That “Oh sh** moment” didn’t make the administration pull back, or order the NSA to follow the law and destroy all communications between Israeli officials and US lawmakers. Rather the administration decided to suffice with winks and nods to make sure that the NSA understood that it should make law breaking an official policy and continue to share deliberately the communications it had mistakenly shared with the White House....They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ a senior US official said. ‘We didn’t say, “Don’t do it.”’” Cute. But probably illegal.

Caroline Glick..
Column One/JPost..
31 December '15..

It is far from clear why senior Obama administration officials told The Wall Street Journal that under President Barack Obama, the National Security Agency has been aggressively spying not only on Israeli officials but on US citizens and lawmakers who communicate with Israeli officials. Perhaps they were trying to make Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu look like a fool.

After all, the article concludes that the NSA intercepts of these communications “revealed one surprise."

“Mr. Netanyahu and some of his allies voiced confidence they could win enough votes” in Congress to scuttle Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Ha ha. What dummies.

If their goal was simply to show that the White House has more leverage over Democratic lawmakers than the Israeli government does, then the article overshot the mark.

Beyond expressing the administration’s contempt for Netanyahu, the Journal’s article showed that Netanyahu isn’t the only one the administration sneers at.

It sneers at the American public and at members of Congress as well. And in so doing, it sneers at and deliberately breaks US law and tramples the US Constitution.

Under US law, American intelligence gathering agencies, including the NSA, are only permitted to spy on US citizens in order to protect US national security.

Under the US Constitution, the administration is arguably prohibited from spying on US lawmakers.

And yet, according to the Journal report, to advance its diplomatic opening to Iran, the administration has knowingly and deliberately spied on both law-abiding US citizens who posed no risk to US national security and on US lawmakers engaged in their lawful, constitutional duties.

As the criminal activity was characterized by the report, to protect Obama’s nuclear talks with the Iranians, Netanyahu was marked as a top intelligence target for the NSA. The NSA monitored all of his communications and all communications of his senior officials – most notably Ambassador Ron Dermer.

The report explains that the NSA’s “targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with US lawmakers and American-Jewish groups. That raised fears – an “Oh sh** moment, one senior US official said – that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress.”

That “Oh sh** moment” didn’t make the administration pull back, or order the NSA to follow the law and destroy all communications between Israeli officials and US lawmakers. Rather the administration decided to suffice with winks and nods to make sure that the NSA understood that it should make law breaking an official policy and continue to share deliberately the communications it had mistakenly shared with the White House.

As the Journal report put it, “White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign [to convince Congress to scuttle Obama’s nuclear capitulation to Tehran]. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ a senior US official said. ‘We didn’t say, “Don’t do it.”’” Cute. But probably illegal.

Perhaps a friend only of the Israel and Judaism of his own imagination?

...Obama is speaking softly about Israel, and hiding the stick – for the time being. But the stick sticks out. If the deal with Iran fails to materialize – if Israel becomes too disruptive, or when the deal is signed and making nice is no longer necessary – Obama’s misgivings will show more than they show today. Yet even today, Obama is quite clear. His frustration with Israel is out in the open. Obama is frustrated because Israel isn’t following his script of proper behavior. Alas, his script is corrupt. It is a script based on fiction. The fictional narrative of Israel and of Judaism that the President wrote for himself.

Shmuel Rosner..
Jewish Journal..
26 May '15..

President Barack Obama does not understand Israel. He never has, and at this point in time one suspects that he never will.

This does not make him an enemy of Israel. I see no reason not to believe that Obama means what he says – that he does care about Israel. That even when he criticizes Israel it is because he cares about Israel. As he framed it last Friday, in his celebrated talk at the Washington Adas Israel synagogue: “It’s precisely because I care so deeply… that I feel a responsibility to speak out honestly about what I feel”.

Caring made Obama say some positive things about Israel in the past few days. As Yair Rosenberg dutifully chronicled in Tablet Magazine, Obama, by saying that Israel should not be denied its right "to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people", "defined anti-Zionism – as distinct from sharp, public criticism of Israel and its policies – as anti-Semitism".

Alas, caring, or having positive thoughts about Israel does not make Obama a reliable interpreter of Israel's motivations, actions, and character. In fact, the combination of his supposed care with an unsubstantiated assumption of understanding can be quite dangerous. Obama is not an enemy of Israel, but his current state of mind could still be dangerous for Israel.

In the past week, Obama publicly demonstrated this problematic state of mind – twice. Once when he spoke to journalist Jeff Goldberg of The Atlantic, and the second time in his address at the synagogue. In both cases, he catered to a receptive audience of like-minded Americans. In both cases, it is clear that he had political goals in mind – to eliminate, or at least reduce, an obstacle that could complicate his rush to sign a deal with Iran. Obama is speaking softly about Israel, and hiding the stick – for the time being. But the stick sticks out. If the deal with Iran fails to materialize – if Israel becomes too disruptive, or when the deal is signed and making nice is no longer necessary – Obama’s misgivings will show more than they show today.

Yet even today, Obama is quite clear. His frustration with Israel is out in the open.

Obama is frustrated because Israel isn’t following his script of proper behavior. Alas, his script is corrupt. It is a script based on fiction. The fictional narrative of Israel and of Judaism that the President wrote for himself.

Indeed naked, but without a tailor in town courageous enough to offer him a mirror

...Obama now needs to accept with good grace that he lost his electoral battle to head the Jewish state of Israel, and take a leaf out of Buji Herzog’s book: Herzog immediately did the honourable – and graceful and civilised and polite – thing and called Netanyahu to concede defeat and congratulate the winner.

Ilya Meyer..
Times of Israel..
19 March '15..

Apparently Barack Obama is the President, Prime Minister and National Saviour of the Jewish state of Israel.



He is also the Global Conscience of the entire world.

In his own mind, at least.

Yesterday, March 18th 2015, it became clear that:

The administration of President Barack Obama will not accept Netanyahu’s policy reversal since his historic speech at Bar-Ilan University in 2009 and have handled his statements as driven by electioneering.”

(Reported by Ynetnews March 18, 2015)

As the above curt report makes clear, President/Prime Minister/National Saviour and Global Conscience Barack Obama does not approve of policy reversals.

Interestingly, here is what this very same Barack Obama had to say back in 2008 on the subject of Iran’s nuclear weapons strategy and Israel’s capital city Jerusalem. Remember, back then in 2008, Obama was just Senator Obama, candidate for the Presidency. Today that same Obama is President.

So of course this is not policy reversal. Not at all, and here’s the simple explanation.

Barack had one policy as Candidate Obama, and a totally different one as President Obama. Now THAT’s consistency! So don’t go confusing that steadfast, pre-planned tactic with policy reversal, don’t go accusing him of folding in the face of dangerous demands by the sworn enemies of America’s staunch ally Israel, enemies such as the terrorists who rule in Tehran and Ramallah.

We knew, in 2002, that Iran supported terrorism. We knew Iran had an illicit nuclear program. We knew Iran posed a grave threat to Israel … We will also use all elements of American power to pressure Iran. I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon“.

(Transcript of Senator Obama’s speech to AIPAC, June 4, 2008)

And:

Let me be clear. Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable … (any) agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

(Haaretz, June 4, 2008)

Like I said, the above statements, which totally and irreversibly contradict his current positions on both Iran and Jerusalem, can in no way be misconstrued as flip-flopping or policy reversal – those are weaknesses, mistakes made by mere mortals, and Obama is elevated way beyond that meagre level. They are NOT policy reversals because he has consistently maintained two policies, one as Candidate Obama and a totally different, entirely incompatible, one as President Obama.

So please stop picking on the POTUS and join him in focusing your venom on elected Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel’s Likud party. That man Netanyahu, whose sole claim to fame is that he is an Israeli politician representing what he sees as Israeli interests, needs to be taken down a peg or two. Preferably in public, so that US Democratic voters can see just how powerful President Obama is. That power is not so much in evidence, it has to be admitted, when Obama is dealing with Iran. Or Russia. Or North Korea. Or China. Or Cuba. Or Libya. Or Iraq. Or Syria. Or Saudi Arabia. Or Yemen. Or Pakistan. But it is very much in evidence at least when it comes to those pesky varmints in Jerusalem, in particular their elected leader Netanyahu. Incidentally, the only elected leader in the only democratic state in the entire Middle East.

And yes, there is an ever so slight element of irony in what I have written above.

Life under the US umbrella by Caroline Glick

...If the Arabs scoff at the US offer of a nuclear umbrella, Israelis don’t even have the luxury of snorting at the offer because there is no reason to believe that even a credible nuclear umbrella would deter Iran from attacking Israel with nuclear weapons. In Israel’s case there are any number of scenarios under which Iran will see an advantage to attacking Israel with nuclear weapons, either directly or through one of its proxies that now encircle Israel along three borders. And so we are left with the question of how to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Caroline Glick..
CarolineGlick.com..
05 March '15..

South Korea lives under a US security umbrella. Both on a conventional and nuclear level, South Koreans are dependent on the US to deter North Korea from attacking them and overrunning their country.

Last Friday, US Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman scolded South Koreans for being too nationalist. In her words, “Nationalist feelings can still be exploited, and it’s not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy.”

The South Koreans interpreted her remarks as criticism of their President Park Geun-hye for her refusal to reinstate reunification talks with North Korea due to Pyongyang’s refusal to discuss the dismantlement of its nuclear program.

Sherman negotiated the US’s nuclear pact with North Korea in the 1990s. The North Koreans used the deal as a smokescreen behind which they developed nuclear weapons while receiving financial assistance from the US which paid off the regime for signing the deal.

Once Pyongyang was ready to come out as a nuclear power, it threw out the nuclear inspectors, opened the sealed nuclear sites, vacated its signature on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and began testing nuclear bombs.

Sherman is now the US’s chief negotiator in the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran.

This week President Park traveled to Saudi Arabia, where she signed a deal to build two nuclear reactors for the oil giant.

The truth is that the North Koreans didn’t need nuclear weapons to deter South Korea from attacking it. Pyongyang possesses one of the largest, most powerful artillery arsenals in the world and it has enough artillery pieces pointed at Seoul to bomb the South Korean capital into the Stone Age.

North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is not directed primarily against Seoul. It is directed against Washington. And, as the US’s timidity in its defense of South Korea, and its constant attempts to placate Pyongyang indicate, Washington has been deterred.

The day after Saudi King Salman signed his nuclear deal with Park, US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Riyadh to meet with him and with the foreign ministers of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman.

According to news reports, Kerry offered the Arab leaders to place them under the US nuclear umbrella to protect them from Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

There can be no doubt that in his conversations with the South Korean leader, King Salman discussed what life is like under an American security guarantee. And it is hard to see that he considers it a good bargain.

It is not merely that the US is deterred by North Korea, and therefore is willing to humiliate and endanger South Korea to avoid having to contend with Pyongyang. It is that US President Barack Obama has destroyed the credibility of US security guarantees by repeatedly failing to stand by them.

Who Would've Thought? An Obama and Kerry Lobby in Israel

...Leading Israeli defense officials regularly and publicly make their views on the key security matters of the day widely known within the Israeli public discourse. In a country where the military plays such a visible role in the day-to-day survival of the state and the safety of its citizens, the views of these men matter and carry extraordinary clout. U.S. officials undoubtedly realize that if they can play a decisive role in shaping what these individuals believe, then they stand a considerable chance of influencing where much of wider Israeli society stands on these issues, thus undercutting the negotiating position of Israel’s elected government.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
24 January '14..

In the course of the past month, a persistent campaign appears to have been taking place, away from public attention, to change the thinking of Israel’s defense establishment. The State Department’s special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Martin Indyk, and his officials have been meeting with a number of Israeli security personnel and IDF generals to discuss their thinking on future Israeli territorial compromise. Indyk, who was also part of Middle East peace negotiations under President Clinton, has reportedly been seeking to convince Israel’s defense officials of the wisdom of plans that would seek to bring about a full Israeli withdrawal from such key strategic areas as the Jordan Valley. To be sure, these lobbying efforts are not being focused on Israeli parliamentarians, but they aim to impact the position of a constituency no less politically decisive.

There is a great irony in all this. As Seth Mandel highlighted yesterday, amidst the ongoing battle of wills over Iran sanctions, the Obama administration currently appears to be operating under the impression that the Israeli government is telling the American Jewish community what to think and that, in turn, American Jews are determining what congressmen believe and how Congress ultimately votes. As has already been pointed out, it is bizarre and disturbing that the administration would buy into this version of events over the far more simple explanation that members of Congress, perfectly able to think for themselves, might have just concluded that the Obama administration’s policy of holding off on Iran sanctions is fundamentally flawed. Either way, what officials appear to so object to is the notion that a foreign government would seek to influence U.S. policy via another constituency. The point being that if the government of one state wishes to have a say on the policies of another, then the proper and above-board way to approach this is through open and direct diplomatic channels.

Fine. But how then to explain the Obama administration’s own efforts to determine events in Israel, by bypassing the Israeli government and seeking to influence a third party? As the Daily Beast has reported, the reservist generals involved in those meetings that have taken place so far have not given any reason to believe that Indyk and his team are being particularly forceful or aggressive in how they have approached this strategy. Yet, by pursuing a sustained campaign of pushing State Department views on territorial compromise in the Jordan Valley to Israel’s security establishment, Indyk and his officials are not only seeking to determine the views of those who advise the Israeli government on these matters, but they are also lobbying a group in Israel who have a tremendous amount of leverage over Israeli public opinion.

Three lovely (nasty) memes about Jews and Israel

...Separately, all these three examples are alarming enough. Taken together, they demonstrate that American public discourse about the Middle East is much more receptive to ideas that we thought had been discredited by history. That’s why, when the next instance of Iranian nuclear duplicity surfaces, get ready for the chorus proclaiming that it’s all the fault of Israel and its supporters.

Ben Cohen..
JNS.org..
16 January '14..

Here are three disturbing memes about Jews and Israel that I’ve noticed in three separate-but-related news stories recently.

Meme Number One: “You’re Ungrateful”

Here’s State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf responding to reported remarks by the Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, attacking Secretary of State John Kerry. “We find the remarks of the defense minister to be offensive and inappropriate, especially given all that the United States has done to support Israel’s security needs and will continue to do,” said Harf.

Now, one can certainly argue that Ya’alon’s description of Kerry as “obsessive” and “messianic” was injudicious—after all, he’s a government minister, not a newspaper columnist. Rightly, Ya’alon apologized. But what’s striking about Harf’s response is that she doesn’t defend Kerry’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which was what sparked Ya’alon’s overly candid criticism. Instead, she effectively accuses the Israelis of biting the hand that feeds them, a theme beloved of the extremists on left and right who argue that Israel is an unconscionable drain upon the U.S. Treasury.

As Israelis know well, the principal and most valued defender of Israel is not the United States, but the Israel Defense Forces. Additionally, the vital strategic relationship between Israel and the U.S. is much more balanced than Harf’s comments suggest. The United States doesn’t have to risk its troops by stationing them on Israeli soil, in marked contrast to other Middle Eastern countries. Meanwhile, Israel enhances American security by, among other things, exporting more than $1 billion worth of military technology to the U.S. every year.

Meme Number Two: “You’re Warmongers”

The Obama Administration’s trashing of anyone expressing doubts about the deal struck last November with the Iranian regime over its nuclear program contains, of course, an Israeli dimension. Objecting to the new Iran sanctions bill co-authored by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), veteran California Senator Dianne Feinstein opined that the proposed legislation was bolstering a “march to war.” And who is directing this heinous agenda? Feinstein once more: “We cannot let Israel determine when and where the United States goes to war.”

What Feinstein’s statement insinuates is that Israel has, in the past, done just that. Those who supported the survival of Saddam Hussein’s barbaric regime in Iraq consistently argued that Israeli pressure was a key reason why the U.S. went to war there in 2003; hence the need to prevent a repeat of that pattern more than a decade later in the case of Iran. In one stroke, all the complexity of the Iran situation—the disquiet among Arab countries over Obama’s Iran policy, the strengthening of Iran as a regional power with dire consequences for Syria and Lebanon, the summary dismissal of successive U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran end its uranium enrichment activities— simply disappears. All we are left with is the impression that the Israelis are pushing us into another unwanted war, aided by their dupes on Capitol Hill.

Past time to cut the apron-strings

...But this post isn’t about the cynical attempt to destroy the Jewish state and re-disperse the survivors, dressed up as a “solution” to the instability and terrorism whose real cause is the inability of Muslims to tolerate Jewish sovereignty in ‘their’ Middle East. It’s not about how the Obama Administration is aiding and abetting that project. It’s about why Israel needs to forgo the 3.1 billion in aid.

The Lavi — an Israeli-developed fighter
aircraft which never made it into production,
 to a great extent because of US pressure.

Fresnozionism.org..
11 November '13..

This guy (Steven Strauss) is right for the wrong reasons:

It’s been over 15 years since PM Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress stating Israel’s goal of economic independence. In 1997, Israel received $3.1 billion in aid from the U.S. In 2012, Israel was still receiving $3.1 billion annually in U.S. aid. We haven’t made much progress towards PM Netanyahu’s goal. For Israel’s sake, as well as for America’s, it’s time to reduce U.S. annual aid to Israel — to 0 — over some reasonable adjustment period (perhaps 5 to 10 years), leaving open the possibility, of course, for emergency aid.

Before I explain why he’s right, let me make clear what he’s wrong — offensively wrong — about. While he also says that US aid could better help bankrupt Detroit, the real meat of his argument is here:

Israel and the United States have increasingly different visions about the future of the Middle East. We shouldn’t subsidize a country (even an ally) that is undermining our policy goals. The U.S. has long-term goals in the Middle East (including avoiding the humanitarian and financial catastrophe of another major war in the region). A major (bipartisan) goal of the United States has been the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel has legitimate security concerns, and a just peace will not be easy to achieve.

However, the current Israeli government is clearly not committed to the U.S. vision, and has done everything possible to sabotage American efforts. Israel’s continued building of random settlements — all over what’s supposed to become the State of Palestine — directly conflicts with American policy goals.

In other words, Strauss implies that Israel does not share the goal of avoiding war! That’s the offensive part. And what precisely is it about throwing international law to the winds and forcing Israel back to indefensible 1949 lines that makes it a “major (bipartisan) goal” of the US?

It’s just the usual anti-Israel nonsense that we’ve come to expect from academics like Strauss, who is associated with that political whorehouse, Harvard University (not that my alma mater is any better).

But this post isn’t about the cynical attempt to destroy the Jewish state and re-disperse the survivors, dressed up as a “solution” to the instability and terrorism whose real cause is the inability of Muslims to tolerate Jewish sovereignty in ‘their’ Middle East. It’s not about how the Obama Administration is aiding and abetting that project. It’s about why Israel needs to forgo the 3.1 billion in aid.

The growing need for Israel to adapt to survive

...The significant difference between the Obama Administration and its predecessors is its acceptance of anti-Israel narratives and ideology, and an unconcern for Israel’s security. Both a nuclear Iran and a Palestinian state as the US envisages it will be disastrous for security.

Fresnozionism.org..
05 November '13..




In several recent posts (here, here, here) I’ve argued that US policy has taken a serious turn against Israel with the Obama Administration.

Now the question becomes “how can Israel act to protect herself?”

There are two important aspects of the situation: the administration’s objectives, and what kind of pressure it is prepared and able to apply in order to attain them. I’ve argued these propositions in detail before, and I am just going to summarize them now:

1. The administration seems to have decided that the cost of keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons is too great, and therefore that its interests are best served by a rapprochement with the regime. This places it in direct conflict with Israel, which is committed to stopping Iran by force if necessary.

2. The administration is ideologically pro-Palestinian. It also believes that it can score a propaganda coup by being responsible for the creation of a Palestinian state. Finally, a major US diplomatic priority since the 1973 Arab oil boycott has been to fulfill its promise to the Arabs to reverse the outcome of the Six Days War. Since the PLO is uninterested in peace and will use Israeli concessions to facilitate terrorism, and since it is likely to be replaced by Hamas in any case, this is another area of conflict with the US.

The significant difference between the Obama Administration and its predecessors is its acceptance of anti-Israel narratives and ideology, and an unconcern for Israel’s security. Both a nuclear Iran and a Palestinian state as the US envisages it will be disastrous for security.

The US can apply pressure in many ways, but in general they seem to be these:

On the Iranian issue, the policy seems to be to promise that Iran will not get a nuclear weapon while at the same time acting to restrain Israel from taking action. This restraint can go from simple jawboning to threats to reveal Israel’s plans to Iran in advance, something which could increase Israel’s losses tragically.

Regarding the Palestinians, the threats seem to be that economic pressure will be applied by its European trading partners, boycotts will be encouraged, etc. And there is also the ultimate threat that if Israel doesn’t voluntarily make a deal with the PLO, one will be imposed, with an American proposal that will be passed by the Security Council and can be enforced by economic sanctions.

So what can Israel do?

Bringing us closer to the day when Tehran will go nuclear

...Though Netanyahu and President Obama seemed to be on the same page on Iran when they met at the White House yesterday, there’s little doubt that Israel’s isolation on the issue is greater than it ever has been. The bottom line here is that as long as Obama is prepared to engage with the Iranians, no matter how transparent the falsity of Rouhani’s position or how unlikely new talks will be to produce any sort of nuclear deal, Israel is effectively disarmed.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
01 October '13..

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly today and drew attention to the obvious fraud that is the Iranian charm offensive. After a week in which the international community and much of the foreign-policy establishment cheered on by the mainstream media celebrated new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a moderate who offers a chance to end his country’s nuclear standoff with the West, Netanyahu tried to play the spoiler at the party. Yet while his arguments detailing the record of both Rouhani and the despotic regime he serves were unanswerable, his speech didn’t get much more applause than his much lampooned cartoon bomb “red line” speech got last year from the same podium. Nor is there much reason for the Iranians to believe his threats about Israel being prepared to launch a strike on its own to stop the nuclear threat. Last week’s decision by President Obama to reach out to Rouhani and to initiate yet another diplomatic process virtually ensures that Iran can laugh at Netanyahu’s vow to act alone if necessary.

Though Netanyahu and President Obama seemed to be on the same page on Iran when they met at the White House yesterday, there’s little doubt that Israel’s isolation on the issue is greater than it ever has been. The bottom line here is that as long as Obama is prepared to engage with the Iranians, no matter how transparent the falsity of Rouhani’s position or how unlikely new talks will be to produce any sort of nuclear deal, Israel is effectively disarmed. As I wrote yesterday, a new round of talks between the West and Iran is no more likely to succeed than all of the ones that preceded it. As Netanyahu said in his speech, Rouhani has bragged about his own role in Iran’s clever negotiating strategy that suckers the West into thinking they have a deal while Tehran wins more time to get closer to its nuclear goal. More such dead-end talks will enable Iran to continue to run out the clock until they can achieve their nuclear ambition.

But like his efforts to debunk the Rouhani-as-moderate theme, it’s not clear there is any reason for the ayatollahs to worry much about Netanyahu’s vows about never allowing a regime dedicated to Israel’s destruction to go nuclear.

Netanyahu’s analysis of what Rouhani tried to do in New York was accurate. Though some credulous Western journalists have taken to speaking about him as if he is a latter-day Bobby Kennedy, his involvement in all of the Islamist regime’s outrages—including terrorism—during the last three decades is a matter of record. That some media outlets were even prepared to buy into the false story line that he had denounced the Holocaust was proof of how eager many Americans are to believe any lie so long as it absolves them of the obligation to do something about Iran.

When does the Unbreakable Bond become an abusive relationship?

...The message sent by these and numerous other incidents is that the US does not recognize Israel as a sovereign state, a state with the power to accredit universities, and to declare that the city which has been the seat of government for the 65 years since its founding is in fact its legitimate capital.

Fresnozionism.org..
14 March '13..

News item:

The US Embassy has excluded Ariel University, located in the West Bank [Samaria - ed.], from the invitation list for President Barack Obama’s speech to Israeli students during his visit next week.

According to student union representatives, the embassy contacted the other seven accredited Israeli universities, all of which are located within the pre-1967 lines, but not the sole Israeli university located in the West Bank.

Ariel University Student Union head Shay Shahaf said he hoped the omission was an error that can be corrected rather than a political statement with respect to their location.

He noted that his school became Israel’s eighth accredited university in December and that there still might be confusion over its students’ status.

Shahaf is being polite. Don’t hold your breath for a correction — this is the State Department that can only mumble when asked what the capital of the state of Israel is.

A chance to revive a relationship crucial to both countries

Yisrael Medad..
LA Times Op-Ed..
08 March '13..

Later this month, President Obama will visit Israel, a country intended by an act of international law to be the reconstituted Jewish national home. The visit will be highly charged, but at the same time, many Israelis have low expectations for what could come of it.

The president's protracted but unsuccessful attempts to stifle Iran's nuclear weapons program, his insistence on zealously challenging Israel's right to a united Jerusalem and his inability to pressure the Palestinian Authority to fulfill its obligations are among the chief reasons for the lack of excitement in Israel.

Still, as befits the representative of Israel's most faithful ally, Obama will be treated with respect, for it is our hope that the visit will help the president come to a truer understanding of the needs of Israel and the reality of the region. In the meantime, he might want to contemplate a few issues.

In September 2009, at the United Nations, Obama referred to Israeli communities established across the former Green Line as the "settlements." His exact words were: "We continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."

I live in such a community, Shiloh, which sits less than 30 miles north of Jerusalem, and I can't imagine how my village and its inhabitants can be considered illegitimate. As archaeological excavations prove, the site was where Jews had lived for many centuries until the 2nd century. Our community, along with other cities, towns and villages, was established in territory where Jews had even lived in the 20th century, until forced to move by Palestinians during the period of the British Mandate and Jordanian occupation. How can reclaiming land that was lost through what some would term ethnic cleansing be considered illegitimate?

The Continuing Story - Anticipating More Obama-Bibi

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
18 January '13..




Part 1

The final polls before Israel’s election were published today and the results will provide little comfort to Benjamin Netanyahu’s many critics in the United States. All the surveys of opinion before next Tuesday’s vote point in one direction: Netanyahu will win. Even the most pessimistic estimates of his party’s vote shows the Likud getting approximately twice as many seats in the next Knesset as the next largest competitor and the parties that make up Netanyahu’s current coalition will gain a decisive majority. Netanyahu will be in charge of a comfortable majority that is, if anything, more right-wing than the government he led for the past four years.

That’s a bitter pill for an Obama administration that believes, as the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported earlier this week, that the president knows what is in Israel’s “best interests” better than Netanyahu and which spent much of its time in office battling him. It makes sense to think the two leaders will continue to distrust each other and to quarrel over the peace process and how to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat. The rightward tilt of the next Netanyahu government and what appears to be the aggressive and confident tone of the second Obama administration in which the president appears to be surrounding himself with people who agree with him rather than centrists or those who have different perspectives both seem to argue for more rather than less conflict between Washington and Jerusalem. But the doom and gloom scenarios about four more years of this tandem may be exaggerated. There are three good reasons that may serve to keep tensions from boiling over.


The first factor that may keep the conflict in check is something that the controversial Goldberg column made clear: the president may have learned his lesson about the peace process. Though Goldberg and the president both wrongly assume that Arab “moderates” want peace and need to be encouraged with “conciliatory gestures,” the writer notes that Obama understands that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is weak. He also knows that every attempt by the administration to pressure Netanyahu and to tilt the diplomatic playing field in the Palestinians’ direction on settlements, Jerusalem and border, was met with disinterest by the PA. Nothing Obama could do or say, no matter how damaging to Israel’s cause was enough to tempt Abbas back to the negotiating table. Indeed, the Palestinians’ decision to go to the United Nations to get recognition was not so much aimed at Israel, as it was an end run around the Obama administration.

Though Goldberg frames the president’s reluctance to repeat this cycle of misunderstand as a judgment on Netanyahu’s lack of interest in peace it is actually an indictment of the Palestinians. Had Abbas responded positively to any of Obama’s initiatives, he could have helped the president pin the prime minister down and perhaps even undermined his support at home. Netanyahu has already endorsed a two state solution and frozen settlements for a time to appease Obama and Abbas didn’t respond to either gesture.

Abbas is interested right now in making peace with Hamas, not Israel. He has stayed away from talks not because he thinks he can’t get a deal but because he fears being put in the same uncomfortable situation in which he found himself in 2008 when Ehud Olmert made the last Israeli offer of Palestinian independence including Jerusalem. Abbas knows he can’t recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn and survive so he didn’t so much turn down Olmert as to flee the talks. He won’t allow himself to be that close to political extinction again.

A History of Pressuring Israel? Both Parties

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
24 October '12..

In today’s New York Times, former Mossad director Efraim Halevy writes about the history of U.S. pressure on Israel. Halevy’s ostensible purpose is to remind voters that Republican presidents have strong-armed Israeli governments in the past. On its face, this is a rather uncontroversial thesis. Who would possibly deny the fact that Republican presidents have abused Israel over the years? Indeed, Halevy’s list is incomplete, since along with Dwight Eisenhower and both the elder and the younger George Bush who were mentioned in the piece, we should not forget Richard Nixon proposed the first land-for-peace deal with the Rogers plan and then muscled the Israelis during the War of Attrition and after the Yom Kippur War. Ronald Reagan also had his moments of confrontation with Israel over arms sales to Saudi Arabia and especially over Lebanon.

The fallacy here is that Halevy cites this in order to refute Mitt Romney’s charge that President Obama has repeatedly thrown Israel “under the bus.” In doing so he chooses to ignore the many instances of pressure from Democrats. Indeed, just as every Republican occupant of the White House has some blots on his ledger with regard to Israel, the same is true of almost every Democrat dating back to Harry Truman. Yet what’s truly odd about the piece, and causes me to question the judgment not only of the Times editors that chose to publish it but those liberals circulating the article around the Internet today as if it was a damning refutation of Romney’s allegations, is that none of this stuff about past Republicans or Democrats has anything to do with Obama. Based on the tone of the last debate, the president seems quite anxious to demonstrate his pro-Israel bona fides to wavering Jewish voters in Florida and Ohio. Those who care about Israel will judge him on his record, but it mystifies me as to why anyone’s vote would be influenced by unhappy memories of Ike or the Bushes.

As to pressure from Democrats, the instances are every bit as numerous as those coming from the GOP.

Truman may have ordered a vote for partition and recognized Israel on the day of its birth, actions for which he deserves and rightly gets great credit. But he offered no tangible aid to an Israeli cause that was dependent on arms acquired from the Soviet bloc. He also supported efforts to push Israel back to the 1947 partition lines and to take back all of the Palestinian refugees.