The poor track record of the doomsayers

Passover is a festival of hope, optimism and freedom. The Israeli public can continue to sleep at night without fear of the doomsayers. Actually, it would sleep better if it did what should be done, namely hold the doomsayers who dominate our media accountable for their unjustified fear-mongering.

Yisrael Medad/Eli Pollak..
Media Comments/JPost..
27 March '13..

One of the outstanding aspects of last week’s visit by President Barack Obama was the demonstration of the depth of our media’s misconception and lack of understanding with regard to the international scene. Let’s review some of our media gurus’ pronouncements prior to the visit with respect to the relationship between the United States and Israel and between Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Amos Harel of Haaretz, back on September 4, 2012, had this to say: “The negative scenario is that Obama resorts to a general, foggy statement about Iran, but remembers to close his account with Netanyahu in response to the happenings of the past few months, right after his election victory (if he is victorious). It is difficult to discount the huge damage incurred to the strategic relations between Israel and the United States resulting from the wave of Israeli pronunciations.”

Barak Ravid, on January 15, 2013, reports that Jeffrey Goldberg, supposedly an Obama administration insider, cites Obama as saying that Netanyahu “does not understand Israel’s interests” and that furthermore, “Netanyahu’s actions will lead Israel towards serious international isolation.” Ravid goes on to remind us that Goldberg’s Bloomberg column is “very similar to Peter Beinart’s recent column which described the White House’s lack of trust in and frustration with Binyamin Netanyahu.”

Ynet’s Washington correspondent Yitzchak Ben-Chorin wrote an article on January 25, 2011, headlined “Obama-Netanyahu relations are worse than ever,” in which he wrote: “The level of personal relationships between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama is tending towards zero... During Thanksgiving, the attitude has changed due to the refusal to continue a building freeze in Judea and Samaria.”

Thomas Friedman, the darling of Israel’s Left, whose political analyses with regard to the Middle East have been more often off the mark than on it, wrote in The New York Times last November 10: “Israeli friends have been asking me whether a re-elected President Obama will take revenge on Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for the way he and Sheldon Adelson, his foolhardy financier, openly backed Mitt Romney. My answer to Israelis is this: You should be so lucky.”

Not all journalists got it all so wrong. For example, in the aftermath of Obama’s re-election, Tal Shalev, on the Walla website, had a much more sober and realistic description of the Netanyahu-Obama relationship. He correctly predicted President Obama would visit Israel to mend his tarnished image in the eyes of the Israeli public. He noted that Obama is a pragmatist motivated by goals, not personal feelings.

Preaching to Israel’s converted

But in order to make peace between peoples you have to demand the same things of both peoples and get both peoples on board to support peace. Recognizing this would mean speaking to Palestinian students as well. Not only Israel’s young generation can make peace.

Seth J. Frantzman..
Terra Incognita/JPost..
27 March '13..

‘Have you come here to give Israel more weapons to kill Palestinians?” shouted a lone heckler during President Barack Obama’s speech in Jerusalem on March 21. When the heckler interrupted Obama’s speech many people assumed it was a “free Pollard” protester. However it turned out it was a Balad activist from Eilabun in northern Israel who had been selected by the University of Haifa to attend the speech.

The presence of a Balad activist at the speech is interesting, considering that Ariel University students were excluded. But the absence of right-wing hecklers was only one element of Obama’s speech that should lead us to question its long-term effect.

Obama seemed to imitate Mark Anthony’s funeral oration in his speech, beginning by praising the status quo, only to change direction at the end. Mohammed Khalaily told The New York Times that “When he started talking about security I felt as if [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu had disguised himself as Obama and was giving the speech.”

Obama seemed to be trying to channel John F. Kennedy in Berlin when he said in Hebrew, “you are not alone.”

But after hitting the right points to make the Israeli center feel good, he then set about challenging Israel’s policy in the West Bank: “Given the demographics west of the Jordan River, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine.”

In mentioning the demographic issue Obama wanted to speak to the pragmatists. Then he sought to encourage the audience of students that the time for peace had come. “The days when Israel could seek peace with a handful of autocratic leaders are over. Peace must be made among peoples, not just governments.”

He talked about the plight of Palestinian students and farmers and mentioned “justice.” Obama recalled his Cairo speech, when he had similarly appealed to young people: “The things they want – they’re not so different from you. The ability to make their own decisions, to get an education and a good job.”

Then president sought to encourage the students to force their leaders to make the hard decisions. “Political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do. You must create the change that you want to see.” To roaring applause he claimed, “the only way to truly protect the Israeli people is through the absence of war – because no wall is high enough, and no Iron Dome is strong enough.”

The applause at every line was odd for anyone familiar with the diversity of Israel. Israel is a divided society, between secular and religious, Jewish and Arab, poor and rich. How could so many agree on so many things? The relatively homogenous applause and lack of protests in the audience was indicative of an audience that was relatively homogenous, ethnically, religiously and economically.

It was drawn from Israel’s major universities.

What He Didn’t Say - Peace Requires More than Israeli Willpower

Barry Rubin..
GLORIA Center..
26 March '13..

I don’t have big problems with what President Barack Obama said in his lecture to Israeli students. He said that peace is good, that peace is good for Israel, that peace is possible, and that people should work for peace and conciliation.

All fine sentiments. The students applauded wildly because they didn’t think he was attacking Israel but voicing the sentiments they already hold, indeed that most Israelis and their leaders have held for decades. The only problem is that Obama doesn’t seem to understand this fact.

Young people tend to think that the world is completely changeable. They look at current reality and see foolishness and suffering and contradictions in it. They think it possible to re-imagine the world.

Of course, change is often desirable, as long as it is a change for the better, and possible. Many things have happened—the fall of the regime in Egypt; the Syrian civil war, etc.—that would be previously thought improbable. And yet there are reasons why things are as they are. What you want to see happen must be interrelated to realities. In 1979–I remember this vividly–the idea that a change involving Iran’s shah had to be a good thing.

Obama said:

“But for the moment, put aside the plans and the process. I ask you, instead, to think about what can be done to build trust between people.”

This is not a new idea. It is something Israelis have been thinking about and working on for decades and especially during the last twenty years. Israel’s declaration of independence, May 14, 1948, declared:

“We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.”

During the “peace process” era of the 1990s, Israelis worked strenuously to build such bridges. I taught a course on political analysis at a Palestinian university (Yasir Arafat’s niece was one of my students) and knew that doing so was at some risk to my life. When the university’s pubic report came out afterward, I was the only person on the teaching staff not identified by country. They could or would not admit that they had a professor from Israel. An Israeli doctor volunteering to help heal people in the Gaza Strip fared worse. He was axed to death.

When the Visitor Calls for Protests in Israel

After years of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic indoctrination, in the schools and general media, it is not realistic to believe that the Palestinians desire what the President told the Israelis to desire: "A future in which Jews, Muslim and Christians can all live in peace and greater prosperity in this Holy Land." And maybe that is why the President did not say it to the Palestinians.

Shoshana Bryen..
Gatestone Institute..
22 March '13..

President Obama's visit to Israel, and particularly his speech to 500 university students, was a winner at many levels including one he probably had not even considered. In how many countries can the President of the United States call forth the passions of the local people and have confidence that he is calling forth the "better angels"? He did it in Israel.

The President touched on deeply felt emotions for Israelis, worked hard at erasing the faux pas of relating Israel's national origins to the Holocaust, twice declined to call Israeli settlements "illegal" while standing next to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, and he praised Israeli technology, ingenuity, democracy and culture. Remarking on the upheaval in the Arab world he said, "So much of what people in the region are seeking is happening here (Israel)."

Yes, that is something he should have said in Cairo or Ramallah. And yes, he called for a "two state solution" that has little chance of success. And yes, yes, he made false analogies between Palestinians and Israelis. And yes, yes, yes, he called Abbas, whose single elected term expired in 2009 and who has been increasingly repressive and willing to incite against Israel and the U.S., a "partner." And no, Israel cannot "reverse an undertow of isolation," that is generated by other people in other lands who do not accept that, at the end of any "peace process," Israel will still exist.

But okay. Those are things that should have been and were expected from President Obama. It was also expected that he would encourage his youthful, carefully selected, leftish college student audience to push the rightish government of Israel to do what he could not convince Prime Minister Netanyahu to do. He directly asked the audience to pressure its government.

In full campaign mode, Mr. Obama told them, "Speaking as a politician, I can promise you this: political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do. You must create the change that you want to see. (People can) overcome a legacy of mistrust that they inherited from their parents… Your voices must be louder than the extremists who would drown them out. Your hopes must light the way forward."

That is a call to protest, to political insurrection. The interesting part is that he assumed igniting a political firestorm in Israel would have a positive effect.

Some Thoughts Concerning Obama’s Speech

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
21 March '13..

Jewish left-wingers are cheering President Obama’s Jerusalem speech in which he once again made the case for a two-state solution. Some are hoping that this will mean a renewed campaign of U.S. pressure on the Netanyahu government. With a new secretary of state in John Kerry who may well be foolish enough to believe he can succeed where so many other American peace processors have failed, perhaps they are right. But it is also possible that although Obama was eager to reiterate his ideas about the necessity of peace, the only real insights about the impact of the presidential visit may be coming from Palestinians and some of their cheerleaders.

While they will also welcome the president’s reassertion of the right of the Palestinians to a state of their own and his criticisms of Jewish settlements, it is far more probable that the part of his address today that will resonate with them is the section in which he laid out at length not only a defense of Zionism but a case for Israel’s right to self-defense and America’s ironclad guarantee of its security. Though there may be some in the Muslim and Arab worlds who will take to heart the president’s sermon on coexistence and shared goals, the chant of demonstrators that greeted him in Ramallah today, in which the crowd chanted for rocket propelled grenades, not more cooperation with the U.S., was perhaps a more accurate reading of public opinion.

Were Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, whom the president inaccurately praised as a “partner for peace,” really interested in pursuing a two-state solution, he would take up the president’s challenge and agree, as Obama insisted during their joint press conference, to a new round of peace talks without insisting on preconditions. But the odds that the embattled Abbas, who is far more worried about Hamas than he is about Israel or the U.S., will do that are slim, making any new U.S. initiative a fool’s errand.

Those who would dismiss the president’s speeches as meaningless rhetoric shouldn’t underestimate the power of words, especially from an American president, to set the tone in the region. But those who think Obama’s appeal to Israelis to force their leaders to once again take risks for peace (something that runs contrary to the verdict of the recent Israeli election) may not only be misreading the mood of the Israeli public; they are also ignoring the Palestinians.

We Hate You, So Please Pay Us More

Many Arabs and Muslims hate the U.S. because it stands in the way of fulfilling their dream of destroying Israel. The strong sentiments against Israel and the U.S. are the direct result of decades of indoctrination and incitement.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
22 March '13..

The anti-US protests that erupted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before and during President Barack Obama's serve as a reminder that many Palestinians continue to loathe the U.S., primarily because of its support for Israel.

But U.S. support for Israel is not the only reason why such a large number of Palestinians -- as well as Arabs and Muslims -- hate the Americans with such intensity. Palestinians who took to the streets during the week to protest against Obama's visit chanted slogans not only against him personally, but also in denunciation of U.S. policies and actions toward the Arabs and Muslims.

In Ramallah, for instance, hundreds of Muslim fundamentalists chanted slogans condemning the U.S. for "perpetrating massacres and atrocities" against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. "America is the number one enemy of Islam and Muslims," speakers at the anti-U.S. rally in Ramallah declared.

Palestinian Authority policemen, who are trained and funded by the U.S. and other Western countries, did not intervene even as the extremists also started criticizing the leaders of the Palestinian Authority for agreeing to meet with the "infidel" Obama.

Palestinian demonstrators in Bethlehem, who trampled on Obama's pictures and sprayed Nazi swastikas over them before setting them on fire, also explained that they were protesting not only against U.S. support for Israel, but also Washington's general attitude toward Arabs and Muslims. "The Americans are the enemies of the Arabs and Muslims," shouted a Palestinian activist standing near Manger Square. "The Americans do only what the Jews tell them to do and that is why they are against all Arabs and Muslims."

The strong sentiments against Israel and the U.S. expressed by Palestinians are the direct result of decades of indoctrination and incitement. Like the rest of the Arab and Islamic countries, Palestinians have been told that the U.S. is the "Great Satan" and number one enemy of all Arabs and Muslims.

The Obama visit - As with most things, time will tell.

P. David Hornik..
frontpagemag.com..
22 March '13..

President Obama capped off the substantive parts of his visit to Israel with a speech to Israeli students Thursday afternoon in which he again focused heavily on the Palestinian theme. He repeated the standard, discredited claim that “given demographics,” Israel could only survive as a Jewish and democratic state by creating an “independent and viable Palestine.”

He allowed that: “There is no question that Israel has faced Palestinian factions who turned to terror, and leaders who missed historic opportunities. That is why security must be at the center of any agreement.”

Obama’s stock words, though, about the need to create Palestine drew lusty ovations from parts of a crowd that included a good many Arab students and left-wing Jewish students. Obama has been criticized for declining to address the Israeli Knesset. Claims that he was seeking a more congenial audience of Israeli students seemed borne out by Thursday afternoon’s address and its setting. He went so far as to seem to circumvent Israel’s political leadership by declaring that “political leaders will not take risks unless people push them to take risks.”

It was not hard to see shades of the same, delusions-of-grandeur, world-changing Obama who had addressed a Cairo audience of students almost four years ago, although in a different context and with different aims.

Earlier in the day Obama had gone to Ramallah for a meeting with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. At their joint press conference Obama retracted demands he made during his first term for an Israeli settlement freeze, saying no preconditions should be set for Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Yet, in his Jerusalem speech, Obama went back to making hard knocks against Jewish life over the 1967 Green Line, calling it “counterproductive” while sparing the PA any criticism for problematic behavior like systematic incitement and rampant anti-Israeli violence.

And not only anti-Israeli; Obama’s arrival in Israel on Wednesday had “sparked rage on the Palestinian street, as hundreds of Palestinian protesters rallied in Ramallah and Bethlehem against the visit. The protesters ripped posters of the American president and sprayed swastikas on others.”

The Israel Test

Shoshana Bryen..
American Thinker/JPC..
21 March '13..

President Obama has had an opportunity during his visit to see some of Israel's pioneering technology. The list (with thanks to Tom Gross) includes energy alternatives; search and rescue technology; a bionic exoskeleton that allows paraplegics to walk; and a "third eye" camera that helps prevent automobile collisions.

If he stayed longer, he could see how Israel has become the world's top water recycler, how Israeli agricultural technology has revolutionized desert agriculture, and how three Israeli universities made the top 100 of the Shanghai Ranking, the worlds most authoritative university ranking system. He could eat the food, dance in the nightclubs, or as he said, put on a "disguise, wear a fake moustache and wander through Tel Aviv and go to a bar..."

The question is not what he will see, but how the president will understand Israel's technological revolution, its culture, and its people. How he will respond to what George Gilder called "The Israel Test."

Gilder posited that one's attitude toward Israel -- positive or negative -- is, in fact, a test of and a reflection of one's self. There are those who see the miracle that is Israel, the accomplishments it has, and the democratic principles it treasures in a region largely devoid of those principles and accomplishments, and say, "Yes, those are great. I want to be associated with people who do those things, I want to learn from them, I want to share with them and have them share with me." There are others who see the same things and say, "Yes, but they stole the land, they raped the people. They didn't build this. Their successes would have been Palestinian successes if Israel hadn't stolen them, they don't deserve what they have and I want to punish them for what they have done."

Admiration on the one side, jealousy and vengefulness on the other.You can pretty much sort the world into "these" and "those."You can also apply the same test elsewhere; for example, to the United States.

Surprise! Rockets fired at Israelis as media focuses attention elsewhere

Sderot: Target of this morning's rocket attack
[Image Source: michaeltotten.com]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
21 March '13..

You don't need to be a political analyst to understand the phenomenon about which we wrote here ["20-Mar-13: If a firebomb hits a bus far from anyone important, did it happen?"] yesterday:

The arrival of US president Barack Obama in Israel is triggering an increased level of terror-centred activity by the local Palestinian Arabs, as we have noted here, here, here and here (for instance) in the past three weeks.

Ninety minutes drive from where tens of thousands of Israeli police are deployed on the streets of Jerusalem and from the security measures that are in place to protect the visiting head of the United States, a lethal attack on Israelis was mounted this morning by the terrorist forces deployed against this country from the south. At least one home took a direct hit. Fortunately there are no injuries.

The Visit to Israel - A Love Fest with Lots of Policy Complications

Barry Rubin..
Rubin Reports/PJ Media..
20 March '13..

The Obama visit to Israel has become an unlimited love fest with expressions of mutual admiration and total agreement. In his joint press conference with Obama, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the foremost issue they were discussing was “Iran’s relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons.” [Don't miss the "PS" at the end!]

Netanyahu put forward his position by praising Obama for saying he was determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons using “determined diplomacy and strong sanctions.”

But, Netanyahu continued, despite all the great things Obama had done Iran’s nuclear program continued and said, “And as you know, my view is that in order to stop Iran’s nuclear programs peacefully, diplomacy and sanctions must be augmented by clear and credible threat of military action.”

Netanyahu thus tried to build on Obama’s previous statements to thank Obama “for always making clear that Israel must be able to defend itself by itself against any threat.” In other words, he suggested implicitly that supporting an Israeli preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities was a logical outgrowth of Obama’s policies, an idea that Obama does not share.

Whether right or not, Netanyahu suggested that there was only about a year before Iran got to the verge of the ability to have weapons. Thus, he is putting a time limit on how long diplomacy and sanctions can be tried.

He also subtly asserted Israel’s need for independent action: “I know that you appreciate that Israel can never cede the right to defend ourselves to others, even to the greatest of our friends, and Israel has no better friend than the United States of America.”

Regarding Syria, Netanyahu noted that this, too, was discussed and that both countries want to see a stable and peaceful Syria. In addition, the weapons in Syria should not fall into the hands of terrorists.

The problem, of course, is that Obama is supporting a Syrian regime that would be Islamist and under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, a sworn enemy of Israel. Moreover, since the United States is practically handing out weapons to terrorists it is hard to imagine that these arms have not already fallen into the wrong hands.

Netanyahu concluded: “And I have no doubt that the best way to do that is to work closely with the United States and other countries in the region to address this challenge, and that is what we intend to do.” In other words, Israel will try to get U.S. policy to be careful and await the day it will come to its senses when it sees the size of the problem Washington has helped create.

The Obama Visit and the Nadir of the Israeli Left

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
19 March '13..

Many on Israel’s right are viewing the arrival of President Obama in their country with suspicion. They look at his record of antagonism toward the Netanyahu government and his past attempts to tilt the diplomatic playing field in the direction of the Palestinians and think no good can possibly come from an event that will give someone they view as inherently hostile to the Jewish state a bully pulpit from which to put forward his ideas. They may be right about Obama’s long-term intentions toward Israel. But for a better idea of who are the real losers as the president puts the country in the spotlight, it might be better to look at what pundits on the left are saying about it. As unhappy as some right-wingers might be about the arrival of what has undoubtedly been the least sympathetic toward Israel of any president in the last generation, it is the left that is really unhappy.

Look at just about any one of the many opinion columnists writing in the left-wing Haaretz or read the lament of veteran journalist and author Gershom Gorenberg in The American Prospect and you quickly realize that the left understands that the presidential agenda signals the nadir of their influence in Israeli politics and policymaking. A couple of years ago they would have cheered an Obama visit, certain that the president would use the occasion to bash the Netanyahu government and strong-arm it into far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians. Now they read of his decision to put the peace process on the back burner and concentrate instead on making sure the two countries are on the same page on Iran, and tell him to go home. The uncontroversial nature of the Obama visit and the lack of expectations that it will do a thing to advance the moribund peace process means the decades-old hope of the Israeli left (cheered on by Jewish liberals in the United States like the J Street lobby) that America will “save Israel from itself” is officially dead.

Obama will undoubtedly pay lip service to the two-state solution, say he’s against settlements and call for a return to the peace table. Some of that will grate on Israeli ears, since the vast majority of the country understands the Palestinians (either the “moderate” Palestinian Authority or the “extremists” of Hamas) have shown they have no interest in peace and won’t recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn.

Why Obama Won’t Be Going to Israel

Rick Richman
Contentions/Commentary
24 May '10

Jen’s post on the White House rabbinical meetings contained this summary of the rabbis’ input:

[Rabbi Jack] Moline said the major responses from the rabbis were to urge Obama to visit Israel, to express some concern of there being a double standard for Israel and to tell Obama that they were not “confident from the President himself that he feels Israel in his kishkes.”

The rabbis thus echoed the request that 37 Jewish Democratic lawmakers made in their own meeting with Obama last week: go to Israel and give a speech (“Message: I care”). It is the same request that liberal Israeli and American columnists made last year. It will be ignored again, for at least four reasons.

First, Obama cannot give the speech without changing the underlying policy that necessitated it in the first place. He has adopted a foreign policy that relies on putting daylight between the U.S. and Israel to “reset” our relations with the Arab and Muslim world. There cannot be a Jerusalem speech to offset the Cairo one — because one of the principal purposes of the latter was precisely to demonstrate that Israel no longer enjoys its former position in American foreign policy.

Second, Obama is unlikely to risk a less-than-admiring reception from the Knesset, which often — as does the British Parliament — features simultaneous rebuttals from the floor. These days, Obama does not even risk prime-time press conferences in the United States. His last interview was with Bono.

Third, a Knesset speech would invite comparisons with George W. Bush’s Knesset address — which, Seth Lipsky correctly observed, “will stand as a measure for those who follow him” and which captured an extraordinary moment in history. Speaking on Israel Independence Day, Bush began as follows:

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