The mistaken and potentially damaging narrative of the Netanyahu critics

...The issue of enrichment and other elements that place Iran weeks from making a bomb at any time are matters that President Obama is clearly willing to compromise on in the final agreement in order to sign a piece of paper. And that is not going to change solely via intimate conversations. And it is not going to change because we offer to divide Jerusalem.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Observation..
25 November '13..

Let's be clear about this: the bad deal that the United States rushed to sign - a deal that explicitly refers to Iran having the capability enrich uranium in the final arrangement, did not come to be because relations between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Obama were not "intimate".

President Obama knew loud and clear both what Israel considers to be red lines vis-a-vis nuclear Iran and the logic behind Israel's position.

Obama's compulsion to make a deal with Iran come-what-may is driven by considerations that take precedence over the USA-Israel relationship, or to be more exact the Obama-Netanyahu relationship.

Simply put, Netanyahu could have been sleeping with Obama in the White House engaging in pillow talk on how Israel would withdraw to the '67 line, divide Jerusalem and welcome 600,000 Palestinian refugees to Tel Aviv and Obama would have still been determined to make a deal with Iran come-what-may.

Whatever improvements there may have been in the interim agreement with Iran weren't the result of behind the scenes intimate conversations. Thanks to Obama's determination to reach a deal with Iran come-what-may concerns raised behind closed doors fell on deaf ears.

Those improvements came because Netanyahu and those working with him engaged in a campaign that put Obama under pressure from other important elements to improve the deal.

In point of fact: in the absence of this pressure, the Iranians would have never had any reason or justification to accept the improvements.

If this was the end of the Iran negotiations this backstabbing of Netanyahu would be no more than part of the regular blood sport that is Israeli politics.

But the "main event" is yet to come.

"Why die for Danzig" (Israel) by Sarah Honig

...Not too many hours afterwards Chamberlain repeated the same performance outside his official residence, assuring his supporters that he had brought them “peace with honor” and patronizingly recommending they “go home and get a nice quiet sleep.” But no one in Europe was to sleep soundly again for many years to come, despite Chamberlain’s cynical sacrifice of a small democracy on the altar of peace.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
22 November '13..

There’s every reason to assume that US President Barack Obama has never heard of the pre-WWII demagogic question “Why die for Danzig?” The same can be as safely assumed regarding his Secretary of State John Kerry.

Oddly enough, however, their policy appears to draw inspiration from the same ideological wellspring that gave the world the above rhetorical tease.

The slogan, very famous (or infamous) in its day, made its debut on May 4, 1939 as the title of an op-ed in the Parisian newspaper L’Œuvre. Its author was French socialist Marcel Déat and his message was that another follow-up appeasement of Adolf Hitler is mandatory in order to prevent war.

That was already half-a-year after the September 1938 Munich agreement which wrested the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and awarded it to Hitler to satiate his appetite. That, in the words of Britain’s then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, guaranteed “peace for our time.”

When he landed at Heston Aerodrome right after the deal was done, Chamberlain told the cheering crowd that awaited him:

“The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine… We regard the agreement signed last night as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.”

Not too many hours afterwards Chamberlain repeated the same performance outside his official residence, assuring his supporters that he had brought them “peace with honor” and patronizingly recommending they “go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”

But no one in Europe was to sleep soundly again for many years to come, despite Chamberlain’s cynical sacrifice of a small democracy on the altar of peace.

*Frustratingly, the nature of tyrants is that they aren’t impressed by nice-guy naiveté. Hitler’s appetites weren’t sated and by March 1939, he invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia – the very one for which Chamberlain expressed so much support post-betrayal and whose security he solemnly claimed to have upheld.

*Even the definitive end of “the Czechoslovakian problem,” didn’t end Hitler’s provocations – as the appeasers had trusted it would. Hitler robbed Europeans of “a nice quiet sleep” with yet new demands. These involved the Free City of Danzig, a semi-autonomous entity created in 1920 as part of the Treaty of Versailles and placed under League of Nations protection.

Hot on the heels of the Munich Conference, Hitler began agitating for Danzig’s incorporation into the Third Reich. In April 1939 Poland warned that it would defy any German incursion. That presumably would subsequently oblige Warsaw’s allies to come to its aid.

And to forestall this, Déat wrote his commentary with the stirring headline that tauntingly asked Frenchmen whether they should really want to put their lives on the line for Danzig. Not only did Déat think that they shouldn’t, but he further portrayed the Poles as intransigent firebrands, whose irresponsible politicking was the source of all their tribulations. They bring calamity on themselves by opposing Germany’s territorial demands, he asserted.

This should sound ominously familiar to us Israelis all these decades after Déat’s powerful pro-appeasement piece. We have been told that we would bring calamity on ourselves if we continue to oppose Ramallah’s territorial demands. This reprimand was delivered by none other than America’s top diplomat – precisely when he and his boss also bent over backwards to appease the tyrants from Tehran.

The Next Showdown: Obama Versus Bibi?

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
298 March '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/03/28/obama-versus-bibi-the-next-showdown/

The world is rightly focusing on events in Libya and maybe in a few days, and more dissident deaths later, we’ll even start caring about the possibility of Syria’s tyrannical masters employing mass murder in order to stay in power. But whatever the outcome of the Arab Spring turns out to be, another conflict is looming just over the horizon: the next confrontation between the Obama administration and Israel.

Last week’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem and the increase in missile attacks on southern Israel from Gaza barely registered as U.S. forces took part in the Libya intervention. But whether or not this leads eventually to another war with Hamas or that other troublemaking Iranian ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, the real question hanging over the region is what the United States will do in the coming months.

That’s the question posed by the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl, who believes that despite the many other more pressing foreign policy issues facing the country, Obama and his team are still obsessing about the moribund peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. One would think that the experience he has gained in his first two years in office would have cured Obama of his belief that the Palestinian Authority wants to sign a peace agreement with Israel and that the best way to achieve this end is for the United States to pressure Israel to make even greater concessions than the ones it has been making ever since the Oslo process began in 1993.

Obama began his administration with an attempt to twist Israel’s arm about settlements, and rather than expediting negotiations this tactic helped derail them. But despite the obvious evidence that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas has no interest in ever coming to terms with Israel (just as his predecessor Yasir Arafat had none), Diehl believes that Obama still thinks that the Palestinian will sign a deal and that Israel, which offered the Palestinians a state in the West Bank and Gaza, and a share of Jerusalem in 2000, 2001, and again in 2008, hasn’t made a “serious territorial offer.”

This is shocking since Abbas’s refusal to negotiate with Israel seriously embarrassed the president last year. After Obama had to back away from the fight he picked with Prime Minister Netanyahu over Jerusalem, many observers felt that he had learned his lesson about the Palestinians. Diehl thinks otherwise, and goes as far as to say that it appears Obama will attempt to pressure Netanyahu to accept a return to the 1949 armistice lines as the basis for peace talks. Doing so would not only, as Diehl points out, give away Israel’s only bargaining chip before the talks begin, but place the nation in grave strategic danger.

Is it possible that with his re-election effort looming next year, Obama would throw Israel under the bus in this fashion? Doing so would be bad policy as well as bad politics but given the way that Obama has already twice made unprecedented attacks on Israel’s rights in Jerusalem (which would be forfeit under a return to the old lines), it makes sense that this is something he would seriously consider.

Of course, Diehl isn’t the only one who thinks so. The other believer in Obama’s eventual betrayal of Israel is Abbas. Rather than talk to Israel, Abbas is hoping to use the United Nations to go around the negotiations and delegitimize Israel. For that to work, he will need for Obama to follow up his recent half-hearted support of Israel in the UN Security Council with a further retreat from the alliance with the Jewish state.

Diehl thinks this puts Netanyahu on the spot to lay out his vision for peace in a scheduled address to Congress in May. But the real question is not whether the Israeli will ably put forward a coherent and reasonable position affirming his nation’s desire for a two-state solution based on security and respect for the rights of both peoples. The question is whether, in the coming months, Jewish Democrats will make it clear to their party’s leader that a betrayal of Israel is not only wrong but political suicide.

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The Media Expects Israel to Bail Out Obama

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
18 January '11

Obama needs a victory. Somewhere. After losing congress and returning from another useless international trip, that victory has to come from somewhere. Outmaneuvered on the home front, he desperately needs to regain his stature and upstage the new Republican congress with a major achievement. And it's clear now to even his dimmest media supporters that such an achievement won't come from another international tour.

His political status as the occupant of the White House, and his own personal celebrity, mean that he can hop on Air Force One and get a reception in most countries. But having cocktail parties thrown in your honor and actually being listened to are two different things. Internationally Obama has become a "party guest", whose attendance brings status and media attention, but who isn't to be taken seriously.

Cracking both the new congress and the world community is hard with no leverage. Most presidents have understood that their leverage came from representing American interests. But Obama has acted as if his charisma and genius would automatically make everyone listen to what he had to say. And it hasn't worked out that way. His personal qualities have made him into an international globetrotting party guest, not a world leader. And now that he needs to be a world leader, to impress congress, the public and the world community-- he's going about it in the same old-fashioned way. By going after the one country he still has leverage over.

Creating a Palestinian state is unworkable in practice, but politically necessary. Which is why numerous presidents, prime ministers and world leaders have thrown themselves into the task. The Muslim world has cynically stymied every call for reform or a crackdown on terrorism, with the claim that the real problem in the region is Israel. Unfortunately few American diplomats have been able to see through that puppet theater. And even more unfortunately, few have wanted to see through it.

Halfway into his term, Obama has discovered that his background in a Muslim country and his antipathy to America, haven't led to any diplomatic accomplishments on the ground. Afghanistan and Pakistan are sliding. The Saudis are pulling the strings. Iran has no interest in being reasonable. And nothing he does make any difference. But the message from the Muslim world is that everything will turn out right, if only he puts the boot down on that one tiny little non-Muslim country in the midst of that great desert of Islam.

Israel has been the obvious whipping boy for a succession of presidents looking to score a victory in the face of domestic unpopularity and no international achievements to their name. Behind it all is the shiny brass ring that the Muslim world keeps dangling in front of the west. The ring that promises an end to Muslim terror. No more instability in the region. A reliable flow of oil. Global harmony between the Western world and the Dar Al Islam. The ring is an illusion, but the need for it is real.

(Read full "The Media Expects Israel to Bail Out Obama")

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The Poisoned Fruits of Appeasement Come Home to Roost

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
21 December '10

The U.S. weakness in countering Iran and other radical forces in the Middle East is beginning to bear poisoned fruits. Jordan is already moving toward getting on Iran’s good side; Lebanon has been captured by the Iran-Syria camp; Turkey has moved into its orbit, becoming an ally of Iran and Syria, while the Obama Administration only emphasizing how important the relationship is with that country despite differences (that is, the Turkish regime sabotaging U.S. interests repeatedly)

Now Qatar--which hedges its bets between cooperating with the United States on basing rights, sponsors the radical anti-American al-Jazira network, and works with Iran on regional issues—has also moved closer to Tehran. Qatar participated in joint war games with Iran and has now invited Iranian Revolutionary Guards troops for a visit including five warships to inspect Qatar’s defenses. Deputy head of the Revolutionary Guards' navy, Alireza Tangsiri, said, "Such programs will definitely pave the way for mutual cooperation."

You bet.

Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip all the influx of Western aid and the reduction of sanctions hasn’t helped matters one bit when it comes to the terrorism of its Hamas rulers. On the contrary, 14 rockets were fired at Israel on December 19 and 20 (one narrowly missing a kindergarten class), by far the highest number since the war caused by massive Hamas attacks a year ago.

(Read full "The Poisoned Fruits of Appeasement Come Home to Roost")

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Roll over Beethoven

Sarah Honig
Another Tack
11 November '10

Even Barack Obama’s midterm electoral humiliation won’t redeem US foreign policy. The problem didn’t begin with the history-deficient mind-set of American students who’ll earn their bachelor’s degrees in 2014. But the intellectual rootlessness of the class of 2014 exacerbates the flaws. Today’s students/tomorrow’s leaders fertilize the soil into which bad seeds are sown by the current Washington elite.

On the simplistic level it was a hoot to read that to the class of 2014 Beethoven is a movie pooch, Michelangelo was a computer virus and Czechoslovakia never existed. For the past 13 years Beloit College’s Mind-Set List by Tom McBride and Ron Nief was a guaranteed source of hilarity, because each year the ignorance quotient it registers seems to climb to unprecedented, more grotesque and inconceivable heights.

But rather than amuse, The Mind-Set List should alarm. It’s safe to assume that things are way worse off campus.

The ignorant are more amenable to manipulation. Those who don’t know there ever was a Czechoslovakia are unlikely to have delved into what led up to World War II. The word appeasement isn’t likely to give them goosebumps. They won’t know how Czechoslovakia was betrayed, ripped apart and sacrificed by antiwar priests on the altar of world peace. It’s improbable they’ll have internalized the sobering realization that the priests were (at best) fools and that the peace they sought to serve was a false god.

(Read full story)

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A war on who's terms

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
13 July '10


We are entering troubling times. The conviction that war is upon us grows with each passing day. What remains to be determined is who will dictate the terms of that war - Iran or Israel.

Iran has good reason to go to war today. The regime is teetering on the brink of collapse. Last week, the bellwether of Iranian politics and the commercial center of the country - the bazaar - abandoned the regime. In 1979, it was only after the bazaar merchants abandoned the shah that the ayatollahs gained the necessary momentum to overthrow the regime.

Last Tuesday the merchants at the all-important Teheran bazaar closed their shops to protest the government's plan to raise their taxes by 70 percent. Merchants in Tabriz and Isfahan quickly joined the protest. According to the Associated Press, the regime caved in to the merchants demands and cancelled the tax hike. And yet the strike continued.

According to The Los Angeles Times, to hide the fact that the merchants remain on strike, on Sunday the regime announced that the bazaar was officially closed due to the excessive heat. The Times also reported that the head of the fabric traders union in the Teheran bazaar was arrested for organizing an anti-regime protest. The protest was joined by students. Regime goons attacked the protesters with tear gas and arrested and beat a student caught recording the event.

Crucially, the Times reported that by last Thursday the bazaar strike had in many cases become openly revolutionary. Citing an opposition activist, it claimed, "By Thursday, hundreds of students and merchants had gathered in the shoemakers' quarter of the old bazaar, chanting slogans [such] as, "Death to Ahmadinejad," "Victory is God's," "Victory is near" and "Death to this deceptive government."

(Read full article)

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The Noose Around Israel's Neck

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
16 June '10

Israel is being hung on a public gallows erected on the grounds of the United Nations with yards of rope gleefully supplied by the Muslim world. But the hangmen are mostly Westerners who still think that the Muslim lynch mob at their doorstep can be pacified with the death of a single victim.

There are three things you can do when you are about to be hung. You can walk proudly, recite a glorious line or two to embed your martyrdom in historical memory, and then allow yourself to be hung. Jews have an extensive body of experience with that brand of martyrdom.

Alternatively you can plead your case all the way to the gallows, arguing that a mistake has been made, that your case has been improperly reviewed, begging for someone to listen and do something. This way also ends in a hanging. But it's the hanging of a slave without even a shred of dignity attached to it. A man that dies pleading with his murderers, and puts his fate in the honesty of the liars and hypocrites whose own crimes makes the worst of his look like virtues, is a craven fool.

Because there is really only one thing you can do when the noose is being placed around your neck. Resist. A noose works by tightening around your neck and cutting off your air or breaking your neck. If you resist the tightening of the noose, you may actually survive. On the other hand if you follow through all the procedures, if you allow your hands to be tied behind your back, and the noose to be fastened around your neck while trusting in the system to do right by you-- your death is inevitable.

For seventeen years Israel has been walking toward the gallows. Its leaders have led it there by the nose ring of international assurances. Its people have been led there by refusing to see what is waiting ahead for them, even while the blood was being cleaned off the streets. Every attempt to reach a peaceful solution, every concession and show of good faith, has only tightened the bonds around its hands and the noose around its neck.

That is because every concession Israel has made, has further restricted not only its ability to defend itself, but even its ability to do basic things such as build residential housing in the capital of its own nation. Every gesture and agreement Israel has signed has bound it to ever more restrictive terms. And none of them have brought any peace. All they have ever done is set the bar higher for the next round of concessions demanded by the enemy and its aiders and abettors in the next phase of negotiations.

This is not a peace process, and it has never been one. It is a public lynching. It is the lynching of a country whose only real crime is that its existence offends the religious fanaticism and prejudices of a billion Muslims, who control much of the world's oil, and whose followers are willing to riot and kill in the streets of nearly every major city in the world at the slightest offense.

(Read full article)

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Extreme Makeover

Lee Smith
tabletmag.com
16 June '10

(This is already the 2nd article suggesting this radical turn, following Caroline Glick's " Hamas rises in the West" yesterday. After reading Lee Smith it might be worth going back reread Caroline's article. Y.)

President Barack Obama’s point-man for his latest approach to the Muslim world is John Brennan, the White House’s counterterrorism czar, recently described by the Washington Post as one of the president’s most trusted advisers. Two weeks ago Brennan explained to a Washington audience that “we need to try to build up the more moderate elements” within Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Shia militia. The State Department rushed in to explain that there was no change in U.S. policy toward a group it has designated a terrorist organization—however, this was the second time Brennan had spoken of reaching out to Hezbollah “moderates” (and the second time he was corrected by the State Department), which means he has the president’s approval.

In reality, there is no such thing as Hezbollah moderates. The party itself claims there is no difference between what the British incorrectly describe as Hezbollah’s political and military wing. And so identifying Hezbollah “moderates” is just political cover for the real work, which as Brennan, a longtime CIA hand, surely knows, is speaking to the hard men, the extremists, since they are the only people worth speaking to.

This is news: Moderate Muslims, the darlings of the George W. Bush Administration’s foreign policy, don’t matter, or so Obama has concluded. Ever since he was on the campaign trail Obama has promised to reach out to Iran and Syria, state sponsors of terror and Hezbollah’s patrons, and now the reason why is clear: because he believes that it’s Middle East extremists who call the shots. Someday soon, the Obama Administration is going to reach out to Hezbollah, as well as other terrorist organizations, in Afghanistan, Gaza, and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Indeed, the Middle East’s savviest rulers have already read the writing on the wall. Look at Turkey. The Bush Administration believed that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP government represented the model of a moderate and democratic Islamic state that would influence its neighbors, especially Iraq. Now, under the Obama Administration, Turkey will still serve its traditional role as a bridge to the Muslim world—not to the moderates but to the extremists. As if to polish up his résumé for this new direction, Erdogan stacked the Mavi Marmara with activists from the IHH, as if to prove that he has relationships with Hamas. Now, when Washington wants something from the armed gang that runs Gaza, they can use Ankara as a mediator.

(Read full article)

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Engagement of Syria Knows No Limits

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
15 June '10

Although Obama’s efforts to engage the Syrian thugocracy have only succeeded in pushing Bashar al-Assad closer to Iran and placing Scuds in Hezbollah’s hands, the president is not deterred. Not even the Republicans’ effort to block the confirmation and redeployment of our ambassador to Damascus is going to halt Obama’s suck-uppery. Indeed, he insists on rewarding Syria for its aggression:

The State Department has dispatched a high-level diplomatic and trade mission to Syria, according to senior U.S. officials, marking the latest bid by the Obama administration to woo President Bashar al-Assad away from his strategic alliance with Iran. The U.S. delegation comprises senior executives from some of America’s top technology companies, including Microsoft Corp., Dell Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Symantec Corp., according to the U.S. officials. All these companies’ businesses in Syria are constrained by U.S. sanctions. The mission is controversial, given recent U.S. allegations that Syria transferred missiles to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Syria, Hezbollah and Lebanon deny the allegations. U.S. officials said the business delegation will meet with Mr. Assad and his cabinet and seek to facilitate the flow of information technology into the Arab state, which is ranked by watchdog group Freedom House as among the most repressive in the world.

This is shocking even for this crew. Obama is committed to a foreign policy in which Israel is cut no breaks — indeed, is slapped around — for innocuous activity (building in Jerusalem) or for asserting its right of self-defense. Israel’s enemies are coddled, encouraged, and extended olive branch after olive branch. The president, in fact, is encouraging bad behavior and signaling that there is no price for aggression.

(Read full story)

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The Jews of Silence

Richard Baehr
American Thinker
18 April '10

The New York Times, in a front page article, described how President Obama appears to be reconsidering, if not turning away from, the historic strategic alliance between the U.S. and Israel. In remarks made at the end of the multinational nuclear security talks, Obama reinforced this message, saying the following:

It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower[.] ... And when conflicts break out, one way or another, we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the significance of these two lines as to the president's thinking. It is also impossible to read these and not realize that this president is the greatest threat to the strategic alliance of the U.S. and Israel since the founding of the modern Jewish state in 1948. The first sentence is in some ways the more incredible. No prior American president has been resentful or unhappy about leading the world's greatest superpower. This can mean only one of two things:

(Read full article)

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Obama's challenger

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
18 April '10

President Obama recently claimed that his policy towards Iran has resulted in an increasing isolation of the regime in Teheran. Now Iran's president has responded, countering that it isn't Iran, but the US and Obama that are isolated.

According to a CNN report, Ahmadinejad declared in a speech broadcast on Iranian TV that "Obama has only one way to remain in power and be successful. This way is Iran." Ahmadinejad confidently claimed that the US was no longer "at the height of glory," but was instead "collapsing." His assessment was that Americans "have many economic and cultural problems. They have security problems in the world and their influence in Iraq and Afghanistan is vanishing."

The Iranian president also said that the US would like to dominate the Middle East but was unable do so without Iran's cooperation, and insisted that "the nuclear issue" was just a pretext. Teasing Obama to deliver on the change he had promised, Ahmadinejad announced that he had sent the American president a message telling him that there had not yet been "any genuine change," and according to CNN, Ahmadinejad referred to American-Israeli relations when he added: "Superficial changes do not matter."

Ahmadinejad's posturing sounds as if he was trying to make the case for Lee Smith's fascinating new book The Strong Horse, where Smith writes:

"Iran and the resistance bloc [i.e. Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and some Iraqi groups] compete with the United States and its allies to impose regional order as the strong horse."

Smith's "strong horse" thesis seems even more persuasive in view of Teheran's efforts to organize an "international denuclearization conference" that is taking place this weekend under the motto "Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for No One". While one Iranian official denied that this gathering was meant to compete with Obama's recent nuclear security summit, Al Jazeera interviewed an Iranian analyst who noted that Ahmadinejad's opening speech was "targeting a global audience." As the analyst explained:

Most countries in the world do feel that the UN Security Council as well as the IAEA board of governors is not democratic, so it is something that most people in the south have a great deal of sympathy with [...] The problem that Iran is facing right now is the fact that western countries are very much biased against the country. So he [i.e. Ahmadinejad] is using this opportunity to point out Iran's position and show that it is a very reasonable and logical one and the reason that Iran is unable to get its voice across is because these bodies are undemocratic."

Right, why shouldn't Iran be the champion of democracy for the downtrodden "people in the south"?

(Read full article)

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Obama’s Syrian Policy Collapses

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
17 April '10

Obama’s Syrian engagement policy is in shambles. The decision to return our ambassador to Damascus has earned us the contempt of Bashar al-Assad and has done nothing to halt his embrace of Iran. We’ve now seen that Assad has upped the ante with the transfer of scud missiles to Hezbollah. This report suggests that the Obami then went a step further in the appeasement dance — calling off an Israeli attack:

Although US officials contacted by The National could not completely confirm that such [missile] technology had been transferred to Hizbollah by Syria, one official privy to intelligence briefings confirmed a story previously reported in the Israeli press that in the weeks before Senator John Kerry’s visit to Damascus on April 1, Israel almost bombed what it claimed was a convoy of advanced weaponry headed from Syrian military bases to Hizbollah along the shared border with Lebanon.

“I can’t promise you that planes were actually in the air, but it was close, very close,” said the official. “The White House had to talk them down from the attack and promised that Kerry would use strong language” with the Syrian president, Bashar Assad.

When asked about the outcome of the meeting between Mr Kerry and Mr Assad on the issue, the source tartly responded: “In light of where we are now, what do you think?”

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Former New York Mayor Ed Koch: Obama is willing to 'throw Israel under a bus to please Muslims'

Stephanie Gutmann
Telegraph.co.uk
03 April '10
Posted before Chag

Last week saw Julian Kossoff blogging ebulliently about the strength of American Jewish support for Barack Obama. Not even “the unprecedented tension between the White House and Israel [can] break the bond,” he trilled.

Now I realize Julian seems to see his role in life as reassurer to the goyim that Jews are Kumbaya-singing liberals — nothing like what he calls “the noisy neo cons and the Commentary crowd” and especially those cheeky, pushy Israelis. So I’m almost a little sorry to rain on his parade, but, sorry JK… not so fast.

One of New York City’s most famous and influential Jews, former mayor Ed Koch, a longtime Democrat — and longtime mayor (he governed New York for eleven years) — is showing distinct signs of buyer’s remorse. And anecdotal evidence gathered by him — and me in my sojourns around New York and New Jersey — suggest that Hiz Honor’s emotional trajectory is fairly representative of a growing disenchantment among Jews who voted for Obama.

The “falling out of love,” the term Mayor Koch used in an August commentary where he began expressing doubts, has been gradual. First there was the handling of the health care bill. Then the President’s failure to extract quid pro quos from Russia and China, then the “underwear bomber” affair. But it was Obama’s recent treatment of Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House (refusing to allow photographs, sequestering the world leader in a room and then leaving him there while he went to have dinner with his family with the instruction “call me if anything changes”) that seems to have pushed the rambunctious former mayor over a kind of edge.



Several days ago Koch, who is still a practising lawyer, caused a media stir by publishing a commentary titled “Never Again Should We Be Silent”. The essay, which declares that “President Obama’s abysmal attitude toward the state of Israel and his humiliating treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu is shocking” was widely reproduced in other media. He received about 500 emails (overwhelmingly supportive of his point, he told me), and then there was the kicker, on April 1, (and, no it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke). He went on the Fox Business News network where he told host Neil Cavuto, “I believe the Obama administration is willing to throw Israel under the bus in order to please the Muslim nations.”

(Read full article)
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Putty in his hands

Obama’s pressure is all about attempting to make Israel more of an international pariah than it already is.


Sarah Honig
Another Tack/JPost
02 April '10

Lonely, vulnerable, affection-craving Israel always yearned for friends. It always also liked to kid itself that it has friends. Hence, at a ceremony half-a-century ago, standing alongside Charles de Gaulle, David Ben-Gurion extolled French friendship for little, renascent, plucky Israel. With no compunctions, haughty de Gaulle doused BG’s warm sentiments. “In international affairs,” he intoned superciliously, “there are no friends, only interests.”

Though unpleasant and untactful, de Gaulle was at least honest, which is more than can be said for Barack Obama.

It doesn’t take a paranoid conspiracy-theory promoter to speculate that the pressure brought to bear by the US president on Israel has little to do with furthering the peace process. Obama’s pressure in fact contradicts the cause of peace. It’s no conjecture to argue that it has everything to do with attempting to diminish Israel, shoving it into a corner, intensifying the ostracism to which it’s subjected and making it more of an international pariah than it already is.

Why?

Because that would weaken and demoralize Israel to such an extent that it would become putty in Obama’s hands. He could then appease the Arab world at its expense.

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Allies Be Wary

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
17 March '10

Robert Kagan says Israel shouldn’t take it personally:

Israelis shouldn’t feel that they have been singled out. In Britain, people are talking about the end of the “special relationship” with America and worrying that Obama has no great regard for the British, despite their ongoing sacrifices in Afghanistan. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has openly criticized Obama for months (and is finally being rewarded with a private dinner, presumably to mend fences). In Eastern and Central Europe, there has been fear since the administration canceled long-planned missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic that the United States may no longer be a reliable guarantor of security.

And that’s just the beginning of the scorned-ally list. As Kagan notes, the Obami are infatuated with engaging foes — Iran, China, Russia, and a hodge-podge of despotic regimes. He explains:

The president has shown seemingly limitless patience with the Russians as they stall an arms-control deal that could have been done in December. He accepted a year of Iranian insults and refusal to negotiate before hesitantly moving toward sanctions. The administration continues to woo Syria and Burma without much sign of reciprocation in Damascus or Rangoon. Yet Obama angrily orders a near-rupture of relations with Israel for a minor infraction like the recent settlement dispute — and after the Israeli prime minister publicly apologized.

This may be the one great innovation of Obama foreign policy. While displaying more continuity than discontinuity in his policies toward Afghanistan, Iraq and the war against terrorism, and garnering as a result considerable bipartisan support for those policies, Obama appears to be departing from a 60-year-old American grand strategy when it comes to allies.

It is therefore not purely a matter of Middle East policy when Obama kicks Israel in the shins.

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Obama and Israel: Not Smart

John Podhoretz
commentarymagazine.com
15 March '10

In both politics and diplomacy, actors must think at least one move ahead. They need to be reasonably sure that when they say or do A, then the other party will say or do B. And they should want the other party to say or do B, otherwise it makes no sense to say A in the first place. The purpose of action isn't just to act, in other words, but to make sure that the reaction you get advances your purposes and your interests. Which is why the administration's behavior in deepening and perpetuating its latest confrontation with Israel is actually rather bewildering. Let's start out by acknowledging that what happened during Vice President Biden's trip last week — the announcement of new housing starts in East Jerusalem — was an affront to the United States. I believe Israel has every right to do what it is doing, but the view of the visiting representative of the administration is that what it is doing is wrong and injurious to future prospects for peace, and this conflict of visions is not going to be resolved. Biden was embarrassed, his visit overshadowed, and expressions of diplomatic dismay appropriate as a result. The Israeli prime minister, who did not know about the announcement, apologized to the visitor and was embarrassed as well by the way in which the dysfunctional Israeli political system was exposed to international view.

All of that happened in a day — on Tuesday. It happened, it was reported on, the administration made its displeasure known, with Biden himself condemning the announcement. Prime Minister Netanyahu's office made clear he had been blindsided by the announcement, which was made by the head of a party inside his coalition government. On Wednesday, privately and publicly, he and other Israelis made their own shame known, and it was clear that there were going to have to be fences mended. Fence-mending is what diplomacy is usually all about, especially by an administration that seems to think its predecessor didn't spend enough time at it.

And then matters escalated. And they escalated because the United States escalated them. Hillary Clinton called up Bibi Netanyahu on Friday and, if one reads between the lines in the reporting on their conversation, basically screamed at him for 45 minutes. Then her spokesman went out and told the world she had done so, and used startlingly violent language — calling the announcement a "deeply negative signal."

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Clinton warns Israel: If you make concessions that rely on U.S. support it may not be there if you err?

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
14 March '10

[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

"In her call, Clinton appeared to link U.S. military support for Israel to the construction in East Jerusalem"

Bottom line: After the miserable failure of President Obama's appeasement policy towards Iran - and the passage of his 2009 "deadline" for Iran we now have a reminder to Israel that the U.S. could threaten Israel in the future if it finds itself in a policy dispute.

So the warning: the last thing Israel can afford to do is take "risks for peace" that rely on American support since there is always the possibility that a future policy dispute will lead to that support being subject to question.?]


Clinton rebukes Israel over East Jerusalem plans, cites damage to bilateral ties

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 13, 2010; A01
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031202615.html

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton rebuked Israeli Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu on Friday about the state of the U.S.-Israeli
relationship, demanding that Israel take immediate steps to show it is
interested in renewing efforts to achieve a Middle East peace agreement.
.....

Some analysts applauded the administration's tough stance, saying it may jar the right-leaning Israeli government into making gestures to the Palestinians. But others said Clinton's call risked emboldening Arab and Palestinian officials to make new demands before talks start, if only so as not to seem softer than the Americans.

In her call, Clinton appeared to link U.S. military support for Israel to the construction in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians view as the site for their future capital. "The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States' strong commitment to Israel's security," Crowley said. "She made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate, not just through words but through specific actions, that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process."

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