The battle for Israel
The Obama regime's courtly waltz with dictators, theocratic despots, and Israel-haters -- all enemies of the United States -- suggests an errant moral rudder that is steering America on a course toward a delegitimized Israel and rising Islamist aggression.
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past eighteen months, it should be no surprise to you that there has been a significant shift in how the United States views the State of Israel and its precarious position in the Near East.
And those views harbor few good tidings for the Israeli people.
Since so much has thus far been reported, opined, and propagandized regarding the Gaza Blockade, Hamas and Fatah, Iran, an angry UN, a condemning EU, and an increasingly bellicose Islamist Turkey, perhaps a view from a different quarter is warranted. Why the dramatic tack in America's diplomacy with Israel? Why has Obama drifted from his campaign pledge to American Jews -- who voted for him by a margin of 4-to-1 -- that he was a friend and close ally of the State of Israel?
Americans accustomed to and in the main approving of the steadfast support for Israel by previous administrations -- and this includes many who voted Obama into office -- are now raising concerns about Obama's recent moral equivalence vis a vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The obvious contention between the Obama regime and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government has also created a tension between the United States and Israel not experienced in more than three decades.
Publicly, the Obama regime holds the mistaken belief that a harmonious peace in the Middle East depends primarily on Israeli-Palestinian concordance -- there is no telling what his private thoughts may be. This is absurd, unless you conveniently forget all of Israel's avowed enemies within the region and throughout the world, past concessions, and the foolishness that was the trading of land for peace. All they accomplished was to make Israel appear weak to her enemies and embolden more aggressive attacks.
Factoring the shift
Over time, as the continuing drama that is the State of Israel's survival unfolds, it is important to be mindful of just a few of the political and personal factors that have helped impel Obama and his State Department minions onto their present course.
First and perhaps most important of all is the code used by the American Left and other enemies of Israel. Whenever someone declares that they do not hate the Jews and are merely "anti-Zionist," what they really mean is anti-Jew or anti-Israel. It is an inclusive cover expression for their hatred of Jews. It is also used by Jew-haters as a foil in a disingenuous attempt to negate Israel's historic claim to its homeland.
Second, Obama, key American military flag officers (among them General Petraeus), many in the State Department, and radical special-interest groups hold the view that the State of Israel bears a good deal of responsibility for the loss of American "blood and treasure" in the Middle East.
Third, Obama's own, publicly-acknowledged intimacy with the Islamic faith and his close, decades-long association with, among a core of other Jew-haters, the unabashedly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Fourth, Obama's persistent assault on the credibility of the Israeli democratic system emanating from key facets of his regime. This has included indifference or inaction over atrocious anti-Israeli U.N. resolutions, publicly lecturing the Israelis on how to conduct their Gaza Blockade investigation, personally snubbing Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House, and signing, at the recent Nuclear Nonproliferation conference, to co-sponsor a 2012 international meeting with the goal of removing Israel's nuclear deterrence capability.
Once an ally, now an irritant
Naturally, there are many other factors at play, certainly some of greater import. But there should be little doubt as to what is unfolding. Obama, Biden, Clinton, and their ilk are persistently attempting to destabilize Prime Minister Netanyahu's government and have now given over to tacit condemnation of Israel's justifiable resistance to terrorism.
Perhaps there is no logical explanation, other than animosity, as to why Obama's Middle East "vision" for peace is so skewed from reality. It appears that to him, Netanyahu is a troublesome annoyance, Israel is an irritant, and thus his specific linking of Israeli-Palestinian discord with the safety of American soldiers battling Islamist terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those pesky Jews are standing in the way of his soon-to-be-announced, history-making peace dictum.
With which, no doubt, he shall "win" another prestigious Nobel Prize.
However, the degree of safety of American soldiers battling Islamist terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan will not change whether there is a State of Israel or not -- they hate America regardless.
Troubling tendencies
Many Americans are of the opinion that Obama does not perceive Israel as an ally; Rather, he believes Israel to be the root cause for the region's problems. Which is why he prefers to appease Hamas, Fatah, Turkey, Syria, and Iran than stand firmly with America's most democratic and closest Middle Eastern ally, as did his predecessors.
Steve Schippert, in a powerful essay for Threats Watch last April, tidied it up nicely:
Israel is on its own. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has known this since January 2009. The Obama administration has known this since November 2008. And now the American public is coming to know it, for President Obama's thin veneer of plausible deniability has been wearing thin. The New York Times today reduces that veneer of words to a transparent plastic wrap over the Obama administration's deeds and actions against Israel.
We are to now believe that, because of threats to American forces in the region, America must "balance support for Israel against other American interests." From the New York Times article Obama Phrase Highlights Shift on Middle East, the first few paragraphs must be read very carefully. Not because the words are confusing or nuanced, but because they are so vitally important to grasp:
It was just a phrase at the end of President Obama's news conference on Tuesday, but it was a stark reminder of a far-reaching shift in how the United States views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how aggressively it might push for a peace agreement. When Mr. Obama declared that resolving the long-running Middle East dispute was a "vital national security interest of the United States," he was highlighting a change that has resulted from a lengthy debate among his top officials over how best to balance support for Israel against other American interests.
Since the Obama regime has been in power, it has shown a troubling tendency to either abandon or belittle it allies -- Poland, The Czech Republic, Georgia, Canada, and Great Britain leap readily to mind.
And now Israel -- only there is no place of retreat or respite for Israelis.
Daniel Pipes argues that American Jews are facing an unprecedented political challenge, and at a crucial moment, with the need to address the existential threat to Israel -- and by extension to the future of the Jewish people as a whole. How will American Jews handle this challenge? Can Obama's Jewish supporters act in a way that will change the unmistakable direction of current American policy emanating from the White House?
Others may argue less gratuitously: Why on God's green Earth do American Jews support Obama at all?
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