New World’s Record for Chutzpah: Obama’s Seder

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
28 March '10

Some 29 years ago, the first president Bush earned the enmity of American Jews with his rant about being “one lone guy” standing up against the horde of AIPAC activists exercising their constitutional right to petition Congress. Bush’s statement symbolized the intolerance and enmity that his administration felt toward Israel and its American friends. But say one thing for that Bush and his secretary of state, James “f@#$ the Jews” Baker: at least they never pretended to be anything but what they were, country-club establishment Republicans who were not comfortable with Israel or Jewish symbols. Not so Barack Hussein Obama.

After a week spent beating up on Israel, blowing a minor gaffe into an international incident, subjecting Israel’s prime minister to unprecedented insults that Obama would never think of trying on even the most humble Third World leader, and establishing the principle that the Jewish presence in eastern Jerusalem — even in existing Jewish neighborhoods — is illegal and an affront to American interests – after all that, Obama plans on spending Monday night mouthing a few lines from the Passover Haggadah at a Seder held in the White House.

According to the New York Times, Obama will take part in a Seder in the Old Family Dining Room along with a band of court Jews such as David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett. The Seder, as the newspaper notes, will end, according to tradition, with the declaration of “next year in Jerusalem.” (Never mind the current chill in the administration’s relationship with Israel.)

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Bombers For Settlements

Avi Davis
The Intermediate Zone
25 March '10

I can’t say I disagree with the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens all too often. His is the first piece of writing I turn to every Tuesday morning, so certain am I that I will be greeted by a succinct, well argued editorial, wrapped in elegant, wry prose.

But his last two pieces for the print version of the Journal have angered me, not for the thrust of his arguments, but for some ancillary matters that he allowed to slip into the writing which betrayed a bias out of keeping with his generally level headed approach.

On Tuesday, March 16, his piece Settlements Aren’t the Problem, he let fly this doozy of a paragraph:

“It’s easy to dislike Israel’s settlements, and still easier to dislike many of the settlers. Whatever your view about the legality or justice of the enterprise, it takes a certain cast of mind to move your children to places where they are more likely to be in harm’s way. In the current issue of The American Interest, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer persuasively spells out the many ways in which the settlement movement has undermined Israel’s own rule of law, and hence its democracy.

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Another Triumph of Smart Power

John Noonan
The Weekly Standard
26 March '10

Over at the Washington Post, Jackson Diehl dives into an unnecessarily tense meeting between Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and President Obama.

Obama has added more poison to a U.S.-Israeli relationship that already was at its lowest point in two decades. Tuesday night the White House refused to allow non-official photographers record the president’s meeting with Netanyahu; no statement was issued afterward. Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arms length. That is something the rest of the world will be quick to notice and respond to. Just like the Palestinians, European governments cannot be more friendly to an Israeli leader than the United States. Would Britain have expelled a senior Israeli diplomat Tuesday because of a flap over forged passports if there were no daylight between Obama and Netanyahu? Maybe not.

President Obama's stewardship of the special U.S.-Israel relationship has been nothing short of shameful. But, beyond that, his behavior towards Netanyahu doesn't make a lick of sense. There's no quantifiable end game here. Obama is either so caught up in his own personality cult that he honestly believes he can drive a wedge between the Israeli electorate and Netanyahu's fragile government (unlikely), or he's just that infantile -- throwing a temper tantrum over an ill-timed settlement announcement.

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'Jews not allowed to pray' in Maimonides synagogue

Bataween
Point of No Return
28 March '10

More proof, if proof were needed, that Egypt intends its synagogues to be museums. Lord forbid any Jew should actually want to pray in one. From the Elder of Zion blog, via Solomonia:

Zahi Hawass, the Jew-hating general secretary of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and Egypt's top archaeologist, has announced that he will not allow any Jew to pray in the restored Maimonides synagogue in Cairo.

He told a Muslim scientific forum that "his decision to close the temple was a reaction to Israeli attacks on Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem."

He stressed that he would treat the Maimonides synagogue the same as any other Egyptian antiquities, and that the decision to cancel the opening rededication ceremony of the synagogue was to keep history and politic separated.

But he would not allow any Jew or Israeli to pray there and he would not allow the Egyptian Jewish community to administer the site. He also said that this was a reaction to "provocative practices that carried out by the Jews in their celebration which was held in the temple." He was referring to the dancing and drinking of wine, which he felt offended a billion Muslims.

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A portrait of the extremist mainstream in Great Britain, a man with a problem with Jewish names

Robin Shepherd
Robinshepherdonline.com
28 March '10

Back in 2003, Richard Ingrams, one of Britain’s best known columnists and a co-founder of the satirical weekly Private Eye wrote in the Observer (sister newspaper on Sunday to the Guardian) the following gem about his attitude to Israel and the Jews:

“I have developed a habit,” he said, “when confronted by letters to the editor in support of the Israeli government to look at the signature to see if the writer has a Jewish name. If so, I tend not to read it.”

As I have said on many occasions (see previous entry for example), there is now no price to be paid in mainstream Britain for such attitudes. They are taken as normal. Now consider his latest piece of writing, this time in the Independent, as an example of what happens when such “normal” attitudes are allowed to fester.

Ingrams writes his column in the form of a diary which then goes on to address other subjects. Yesterday, he opened his piece by reflecting on Britain’s decision last week to expel an Israeli diplomat over the Dubai assassination of a Hamas terrorist. Here is what he said, with my italics to highlight the tone he adopts:

“The expulsion of a Mossad man from London following the affair over the forged passports used by a gang of Israeli assassins in Dubai is welcome, if only to remind us that regardless of this single expulsion Mossad operates openly out of London with the full approval of the British Government.

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It Is Not A Capital Offense For Israel To Disagree With An American Administration Regarding Policy

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Commentary
28 March '10

It is not a capital offence for Israel to disagree with an American administration regarding policy.

I can appreciate that President Obama thinks that our leaving the Golan, dividing Jerusalem, etc. will bring us utopian peace and that not taking his advice may even have a negative impact on America in the Moslem world, thus he has every reason to use "tough love" to force us to do what is in our own best interest - and that he has an Amen chorus of Jews supporting this view.

However, it is not a capital offense for a democratically elected Israeli government to reject American policy recommendations.

President Obama has a broad range of instruments available to promote his views other than giving our enemies the impression that if we don't march to his drum that America may opt to turn its back on us at a time of crisis.

That such ideas are being allowed to float around without being explicitly and clearly denied and denounced by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton could very well invite disaster.

Claims from the White House that the Obama-Netanyahu meetings were not insulting do not address this critical point. In particular since the entire policy dictat (it is not a discussion or debate because the Obama team is unwilling to even entertain the possibility that they could be wrong) is presented as an American initiative to force Israel to do what "we all know" is in Israel's best interest.

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Hostility to Israel Plays out

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
28 March '10

Given the Obami’s assault on Israel’s building in its eternal capital, this should come as no surprise:

The chief of the Arab League warned Saturday that Israel’s actions could bring about a final end to the Middle East peace process. Amr Moussa urged an Arab leadership summit in Libya on Saturday to forge a new strategy to pressure Israel, saying the peace process could not be “an open ended process.”

“We must prepare for the possibility that the peace process will be a complete failure,” Moussa said. “This is the time to stand up to Israel. We must find alternative options, because the situation appears to have reached a turning point.”

Speaking at the event, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said there would be no peace agreement without ending the occupation of Palestinian land, first and foremost east Jerusalem. He accused Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu’s government of trying to create a de facto situation in Jerusalem that would torpedo any future peace settlement.

Then the increasingly Islamic-tilting Turkish government gets into the act:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a guest at the summit, said in his speech that the Israeli “violation” of peace in Jerusalem and Muslim holy sites was unacceptable. Erdogan said that the Israeli position defining the whole of Jerusalem as its united capital was “madness.” Israeli construction in east Jerusalem was completely unjustified, he said

The UN, of course, can’t be left out of the Israel bash-a-thon. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pipes up:

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NY Times Defends Obama, Not U.S. Interests; Blames Israel, Not White House or Palestinians For All Problems

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
28 March '10

The New York Times has now crossed the line from being a grossly slanted newspaper in its Middle East coverage to being one so partisan, blinkered, and defensive as to lose its value altogether. I do not write this lightly and have no wish to exaggerate. But the newspaper’s editorial of March 26 is so mendacious, so made up to suit the political purposes of the Obama administration without any reference to the facts that it is a work of politically tailored fiction.

Basically, the themes or omissions are as follows:

--Israeli policy is the result of extreme right-wing politicians.

--Most Israelis support Obama rather than their own government.

--The U.S.-Israel agreement of last October never existed.

--The Palestinians don’t exist and one doesn’t need to mention their actions or the administration’s total catering to them.

--Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done something so awful that it proves he doesn't want peace. What did he do? Precisely what he told the U.S. government he was going to do five months ago and which they then called a major step toward peace!

The goal is to portray the issue as not being Obama versus Israel but rather Obama plus the Israeli majority against a relatively small number of extremists who have hijacked the country.

If only such tactics were used against America’s enemies.

Unfortunately, it is necessary to discuss this editorial in detail. It begins:

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Related article: The New York Times, Obama, and Israel: A New Low for the Paper of Record
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Positioning Israel as the Nazi of Nations

Richard L. Cravatts

American Thinker

28 March '10

Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., director of Boston University's Program in Publishing, just finished a book about the worldwide assault on Israel taking place on college campuses: Genocidal Liberalism: The University's Jihad Against Israel & Jews.

Jews have been accused of harming and murdering non-Jews since the twelfth century in England, when Jewish convert to Catholicism Theobald of Cambridge perjuriously proclaimed that European Jews ritually slaughtered Christian children each year and drank their blood during Passover season.

That medieval blood libel, largely abandoned in the contemporary West, does, however, still appear as part of the Arab world's vilification of Jews -- now transmogrified into a slander against Israel, the Jew of nations. But in the regular chorus of defamation against Israel by a world infected with Palestinianism, a new, more odious trend has begun to show itself: The blood libel has been revivified, but to position Israel and Zionism as demonic agents in the community of nations, its primitive superstitions are now masked with a veneer of academic scholarship and politicized scientific study.

In March, to cite the latest instance of this trend, the findings of a study conducted by the New Weapons Research Group (Nwrg), a team of scientists based in Italy, were announced on "the use of unconventional weapons and their mid-term effects on the population of after-war areas" -- in this, case Gaza after Israel's "Cast Lead" operations last year. "Many Palestinian children still living in precarious situations at ground level in Gaza after Israeli bombing," the study found, "have unusually high concentrations of metals in the hair, indicating environmental contamination, which can cause health and growth damages due to chronic exposure," and these high levels were the direct result of Israeli bombs.

Moreover, suggested Professor Paola Manduca, one of the investigators, the presence of metals in children's hair "presents serious problems in the current situation in Gaza, where the construction and removal of damaged structures is difficult or impossible, and," in case anyone does not know whom to blame, "certainly represents the major responsibility of those who should remedy the damage to the civilian population under international law."

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To only say Iranian nukes are unacceptable is to accept them

William Kristol
Washington Post
28 March '10

In March 1936, Hitler occupied the Rhineland. The French prime minister, Leon Blum, denounced the act as "unacceptable." But France, Britain and the rest of the world accepted it. Years later, the French political thinker Raymond Aron commented, "To say that something is unacceptable was to say that one accepted it."

In March 2010, as Iran moved ahead with its nuclear weapons program, the American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, speaking at the policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last week, said no fewer than four times in one paragraph that a nuclear-armed Iran would be "unacceptable." It would be unacceptable simply, "unacceptable to the United States," "unacceptable to Israel" and "unacceptable to the region and the international community."

Then, perhaps sensing the ghost of Raymond Aron at her shoulder, Clinton hastened to add: "So let me be very clear: The United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."

But this attempt at reassurance merely conjured up (at least for me) another ghost: that of Richard Nixon. Didn't Nixon always say, at moments of utmost insincerity, that he wanted to make something very clear?

In March 2010, as Iran moved ahead with its nuclear weapons program, the American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, speaking at the policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last week, said no fewer than four times in one paragraph that a nuclear-armed Iran would be "unacceptable." It would be unacceptable simply, "unacceptable to the United States," "unacceptable to Israel" and "unacceptable to the region and the international community."

Then, perhaps sensing the ghost of Raymond Aron at her shoulder, Clinton hastened to add: "So let me be very clear: The United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."

But this attempt at reassurance merely conjured up (at least for me) another ghost: that of Richard Nixon. Didn't Nixon always say, at moments of utmost insincerity, that he wanted to make something very clear?

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Obama ensures that terror has no consequences

Elder of Ziyon
26 March '10

From YNet:

The Obama Administration is demanding that Israel hand over more West Bank land to exclusive PA control, including the Abu-Dis area adjacent to Jerusalem, Palestinian sources told Ynet Thursday.
According to the US vision, the move will take place as part of reverting to the state that prevailed in the West Bank before the outbreak of the last Intifada.

"The most significant demand is to restore the situation to what it was on the eve of the Intifada," one source said.

Because what could possibly be wrong with turning back the clock to the day before a war began that killed a thousand Israeli civilians?
Starting and losing a war has consequences in every part of the world except for one. Since 1967, the world - and "international law" as interpreted by most - is fixated on the idea that the Arabs can start all the wars they want against Israel. If they lose, international pressure will ensure that the previous status quo can be returned to, so there are no consequences for losing.

We have seen Egypt, Syria, the PLO, the PLO again, Hezbollah and Hamas start wars with Israel, secure in the knowledge that they will not lose anything of consequence if they lose the war. Just expendable people who are less important than "The Struggle" and perhaps a few years of negotiations and pressure.

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Obama’s message

Fresnozionism.org
27 March '10

When Binyamin Netanyahu visited the White House last Tuesday, he was not treated like the Prime Minister of just any banana republic. He was treated like Manuel Noriega. No interviews, no photo-ops, no dinner, and a whole pile of demands. He and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were lucky not to have been locked in a room and forced to listen to heavy metal at top volume.

As a citizen of Israel and of the US, I was insulted and embarrassed in turn. As a Jew and a Zionist who believes that the survival of the Jewish people depends on the state of Israel I was horrified. Even Barry Rubin, who has been saying for the last couple of weeks that the crisis in US-Israeli relations has been blown out of proportion, admitted today that

…now it has become reasonable to ask whether the Obama White House is running amuck on Israel, whether it is pushing friction so far out of proportion that it is starting to seem a vendetta based on hostility and ideology.

Ehud Ya’ari, one of Israel’s most respected commentators, said,

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President Obama’s Priorities: Human Rights Be Damned

Anne Bayefsky..
Commentary
26 March '10

On Friday, March 26, 2010, the UN Human Rights Council’s month-long session ended, along with any justification for believing that President Obama is a champion of human rights. The president insisted that America join the UN’s lead human-rights body for the first time very early in his presidency, and the consequences are now painfully clear. The enemies of democracy and freedom are having a field day at the expense of American interests and values.

The Council, which meets in Geneva, is the personal playground of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. They hold the balance of power by controlling the Asian and African regional groups, which together form a majority at the Council. The Council’s agenda is accordingly fixated on issues of priority to the Islamic bloc -- number one, delegitimizing Israel; number two, trumping free speech in the name of Islam; and number three, avoiding any criticism of human-rights violations in their own backyards. None of which has anything to do with protecting human rights.

More troubling than the Council’s growing infamy, however, is the Obama administration’s relationship to it. The America on display in Geneva is an embarrassment, and the only people oblivious to how the U.S. is perceived by those assembled are the American representatives themselves.

Having jumped on the Council bandwagon last year without insisting on any reform-minded preconditions, U.S. diplomats now sit there taking it on the chin and lending predictable and immutable Council routines undeserved legitimacy. This past session, the Council adopted five resolutions condemning Israel and fewer resolutions on the rest of the world combined: one each on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, North Korea, Burma/Myanmar, and Guinea.

The other 187 states on the planet got a free pass from the Council, notwithstanding the pressing reality of Nigeria’s butchered Christians, Saudi Arabia’s gender apartheid, Egypt’s systematic torture, China’s iron fist, Sudan’s genocide, and Russia’s slain human-rights defenders. In fact, over the entire four-year history of the Council, more than half of all resolutions and decisions condemning any state have been directed at Israel alone.

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The New York Times, Obama, and Israel: A New Low for the Paper of Record

Ron Radosh
Pajamasmedia.com
27 March '10

If one needs any more proof of the animus towards Israel coming from the editors of The New York Times, look no further than today’s editorial — which marks a new low for the paper. Perhaps they were merely lazy and decided to plagiarize editorials appearing regularly in the pages of The Nation. Or perhaps they just realize that most of their readers don’t subscribe to the official publication of the far Left, and need to get the message out on their own.

Whatever the explanation, the editors felt the need to both chastise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for defending his country’s interests, and to praise to the skies President Barack Obama for his highly extraordinary and rude treatment of Netanyahu two days ago. According to their account, “the Obama administration had hoped Mr. Netanyahu would give it something to work with.” But instead, he unceremoniously would not condemn the very legal building in Jerusalem that all previous administrations had not contested. Instead, Netanyahu’s firm stance is interpreted by them as an assault on the supposed but really non-existent “peace process,” and a barrier to reaching a “two-state solution” for the Middle East.

As usual, the editors call the government “right-wing,” which means to the Times readers it is evil personified. Moreover, by insisting on the right to build in an area which everyone knows will be part of Israel once peace is attained, somehow to the editors it is to take place in an area “which Palestinians hope to make the capital of an independent state.” So by refusing to accept Obama’s demands, the editors assert that Obama “has been understandably furious at Israel’s response.”

Meanwhile, just a few days after Secretary of State Clinton told AIPAC that the U.S. would demand “sanctions that bite” on Iran, we have all learned that instead, U.S. policy is to soften any talk of sanctions in the vague hope that Russia and China will work with us to convince Iran to move away from its program for a nuclear bomb capacity. But while the U.S. can play nice with Iran, the announcement that an apartment complex will be built someday in Jerusalem means to the Times that the administration has to get even tougher with Israel.

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Obama: Passover Wrap Up, "Next Year In Jerusalem ," Deemed "Provocative"(Satire)

Doc's Talk
27 March '10

Shana Habbab (AP White House Correspondent)

(AP) — An unidentified Israeli official has confirmed that private discussions between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu included an urgent request from the President that the traditional closing refrain “next year in Jerusalem” be deleted during the upcoming Passover holiday, calling the ancient passage provocative and unhelpful for the future of peace talks. Calling it “an easy fix,” Obama strongly urged the Jewish People to replace it with “next year in peace” or “next year in Tel Aviv,” leaving the exact wording to final status talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Netanyahu is said to have balked at the request, indicating that the refrain dates back well before the UN Partition of 1947 and well before the U.S. Declaration of Independence, for that matter. The Prime Minister reportedly attempted to diffuse the situation by offering to remove it from the conclusion of the lesser-known Yom Kippur service, and suggesting the phrase was defunct anyway since Jews have controlled all of Jerusalem since 1967. However, a visibly irritated President Obama flatly rejected the compromise, adding it was another indication the “stiff-necked” Prime Minister did not appear “serious about peace.”

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The Error-Ridden Obama Middle East Policy

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
27 March '10

In a must-read analysis of the Obami assault on Israel, Elliott Abrams writes:

Since the Oslo Accords of 1993, 17 years of efforts under three American presidents and six Israeli prime ministers have taught five clear lessons. Each of them is being ignored by President Obama, which is why his own particular “peace process” has so greatly harmed real efforts at peace. Today the only factor uniting Palestinian, Israeli, and Arab leaders is distrust of the quality, sagacity, and reliability of American leadership in the region.

The lessons Abrams enumerates suggest that we are in for a dangerous and destabilizing period in which the U.S.-Israeli alliance is torn asunder. First in the list of grievous errors: rather than provide Israel with security and reassurance, the Obami are out to bludgeon the Jewish state to cough up concessions:

During the George W. Bush years, the leader of the Israeli right, Ariel Sharon, decided to abandon the idea of a “Greater Israel,” impose constraints on settlement construction in the West Bank (no new settlements, no outward expansion of settlement territory), and remove every settlement in Gaza and four small ones in the West Bank. His closest advisers say all of this was possible for him only in the context of unwavering American support for Israel’s security steps—including the targeting and killing of Hamas terrorists and the refusal to deal with a terrorist leader like Arafat. What was the turning point for Sharon? Bush’s June 24, 2002, speech, where he abandoned Arafat, denounced Palestinian terrorism, and said thorough reforms were the only possible basis for Palestinian statehood. Reassured, Sharon began to act.

Contrast this with the Obama administration, where Israel has been “condemned”—the toughest word in the diplomatic dictionary—for a housing project.

Second, the Obami have failed to hold the Palestinians accountable for their own behavior or make any demands that one would ordinarily place on a party to a negotiation:

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Israel Won’t Be Bullied by Obama, But Bibi’s Tactic Could Fail as Well

Israel is thoroughly united against Obama, but Netanyahu's willingness to categorize parts of Israel as having less status than Jerusalem is dangerous.


Moshe Dann
Pajamamedia.com
27 March '10

Harsh condemnations of Israel for building in areas of Jerusalem acquired after the Six Day War in 1967 have backfired. If President Obama thought that he would move negotiations ahead and force Israel to make more concessions, he caused the exact opposite situation. Israelis have united in support of Prime Minister Netanyahu, while Arab Palestinian leaders have, on cue, stepped back.

Equating the issue of where and when Jewish communities can be built within the land of Israel with the issue of “settlements” was a mistake — it gave Israel an easy position to defend, especially domestically. Opposing the right of Jews to live in all parts of Jerusalem is not a change in the American position; Obama has made U.S. policy on Jerusalem consistent with that in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and the Golan Heights. In so doing, however, he has rallied Israelis, Jews, and Zionists around the world.

The premise of Obama’s demand that Israel stop all construction in all areas conquered by Israel in 1967 is logical: if Israel has violated international law by “illegally occupying Palestinian land,” then there are no differences between one area and another. But PM Netanyahu distinguishes between Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria, hinting that he’s open to more withdrawals.

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The taboo on Israeli chauvinism

Sarah Honig
Another Tack/JPost
26 March '10

Those Israelis not shunned in the media and on campuses abroad are predominantly left-wing trashers of their own country.

Truth is often an unwelcome guest. Truth can be unpopular. Truth can disconcert. Truth can be bad for business. Truth can be counterproductive for certain reputations – even for the reputation of professionals whose status is ostensibly derived from their dedication to seeking truth.

Truth can be denied even when solidly backed by history. In our postmodern moral-relativist environment no truths exist, only self-serving narratives, claims and counterclaims. Hence truth can be spurned as a biased assertion aimed at furthering someone’s narrow interests. This is all the more insidious because it’s so fashionable.

It’s simplistic to dismiss any fact as an expedient and calculated misrepresentation. This isn’t just intellectual indolence. It’s also intellectual anarchy. Everything can be willy-nilly turned upside down. With nothing rooted to actual sequences of events, liars are liberated. Falsehoods are granted equal standing with truth. Frequently they even gain ascendency and are paraded as unquestionable. Values are devalued. Good and evil are interchangeable. Anything goes.

MY ABOVE ruminations were inspired by twin events. An opinion piece I wrote for an Australian newspaper elicited a deluge of noxious e-mails sent to my private mailbox. In these my ancestors and I were dispatched to the lowest levels of hell and my offspring and I were threatened with torture and death.

Yet somehow worse, because it didn’t come from the loony fringe, was a very polite letter sent by a highly respectable German magazine editor to an acquaintance (also German) who suggested the periodical print his translated version of my column “A good cop goes to Auschwitz” (January 20). The column revisited the World War II avid Arab collaboration with the Nazis (in the wake of MK Muhammad Barakei’s provocative participation at the Auschwitz liberation memorial).

It was flatly rejected on the grounds that it’s “too pro-Israel” and “too massively partisan.” The editor judged it unsuitable, saying it raises “the specter of chauvinism” (in its original sense of ultra-nationalism, before it was hijacked by gender polemics).

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Bibi’s Predicament

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
27 March '10

(While I'm sure I'll be posting additional thoughts on this, there is quite a consensus that this is not a passing phenomenon but something both dangerous and with malice. We're going to need to reach inside and find some real strengths we haven't had to use lately, a lot of effort, a lot of tefilot. Y.)

It should be clear by now that President Obama intends to pursue the “peace process” in the same way that he pursued health care — by ramming it down his opponent’s throat, in this case, Israel’s.

According to news reports, Obama has presented Bibi with a long list of demands, acquiescence to which would “resolve” the immediate Obama-created crisis and “allow” a move toward proximity talks (never mind that Israel has always been willing to hold direct talks). Obama thus places Bibi on the horns of an impossible dilemma: Both accepting and rejecting the demands carries immense costs.

Accepting the demands would be humiliating to Bibi. He would have to roll over and — in front of a global audience – expose his stomach to Obama like a defeated dog. This would surely please our thuggish president, but it would carry severe costs for Netanyahu: 1) He would be vilified in Israel and his domestic position imperiled. 2) Even if he wanted to roll, his government may not allow it; one or several of his coalition partners may abandon him. At a moment of critical national-security threats, the government might descend into crisis. Bibi knows that to allow this to happen in the decisive phase of the Iranian nuclear standoff would be supremely dangerous. And 3) Obama’s vindictive and outlandish behavior raises legitimate Israeli suspicions that the “proximity talks” would actually be a trap — and therefore Israel should reject the immediate demands as a way of forestalling the next round of bullying. Let us recall that just four months ago, the administration hailed the settlement freeze as an unprecedented concession; today Obama pretends that he never made the agreement.

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Has the Obama Administration, against U.S. interests, declared diplomatic war on Israel?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
27 March '10

Has the Obama Administration, against U.S. interests, declared diplomatic war on Israel?

Up to now my view has been that the U.S. government didn’t want a crisis but merely sought to get indirect negotiations going between Israel and Palestinians in order to look good.

Even assuming this limited goal, the technique was to keep getting concessions from Israel without asking the PA to do or give anything has been foolish, but at least it was a generally rational strategy.

But now it has become reasonable to ask whether the Obama White House is running amuck on Israel, whether it is pushing friction so far out of proportion that it is starting to seem a vendetta based on hostility and ideology. And if that's true, there is little Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or any Israeli leader can do to fix the problem.

A partial explanation of such behavior can be called, to borrow a phrase from the health law debate, a "single-payer option" as its Middle East strategy. That is, the administration seems to envision Israel paying for everything: supposedly to get the Palestinian Authority (PA) to talks, do away with any Islamist desire to carry out terrorism or revolution, keep Iraq quiet, make Afghanistan stable, and solve just about any other global problem.

What makes this U.S. tactic even more absurd is doing so at the very moment when it is coddling Syria and losing the battle for anything but the most minimal sanctions on Iran.

During his visit to Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to defuse the tension. His partners in government, we should never forget, are Defense Minister Ehud Barak, leader of the Labour Party, and President Shimon Peres, who has done more to promote Middle East peace than any other living Israeli leader.

But according to reliable sources, Obama went out of his way to be personally hostile, treating Netanyahu like some colonial minion who could be ordered around.

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