A poster in Israel |
By Alan
Caruba
President Obama made no secret of his
displeasure that Benjamin Netanyahu was reelected to be Israel’s Prime Minister.
Only David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister and one of the nation’s
founders, served longer.
Obama lives in some parallel universe
apart from the lessons of history and the realities of what is actually
occurring. On May 18, 2009, not long after Obama had been in office and Netanyahu was
visiting the White House, Obama was demanding that he endorse Palestinian
statehood and freeze the settlements on the West Bank.
Considering that the Palestinians had
refused statehood from the day the United Nations endorsed Israel’s independence
that has been a fool’s mission no matter who was President or Prime Minister.
As for Obama’s demands about
settlements, who is Obama to tell the Israelis in 2009 where and if they can
build the housing needed for its growing population? And yet Netanyahu, seeking
to accommodate Obama, endorsed Palestinian statehood shortly thereafter and then
announced a ten-month freeze on settlement development.
What did Netanyahu get in return?
Nothing.
In 2014 when the Israelis responded
militarily to months of rocket attacks from Gaza, it contacted the Department of
Defense to request Hellfire missiles and Obama reportedly personally blocked the
shipments.
The talks with Iran that have been
Obama’s obsession since he took office have continued despite his promise not to
“have talks forever.” This has been his pattern of behavior since the day he
took office. As Wall Street columnist Brett Stephens observed, “The President
collects hard favors from allies and replays them with neglect and derision.
This is the mentality of a peevish and callow
potentate.”
Netanyahu’s speech to a joint meeting
of Congress left the White House deeply angered and his reelection probably
stunned them. The Israelis are accustomed to being
underestimated.
At this point, Obama has given plenty
of evidence that he is both pro-Islam and anti-Israel. Michael Haltman has
written a timeline of events, “Obama’s
Israel Hatred”, that reflect Obama’s attitudes in terms of the people with
whom he associated before his 2008 run for the presidency and the events that
followed thereafter.
Unspoken, but widely suspected, is the
question of whether Obama is also anti-Semitic. As Haltman points out “Obama has
spent his entire life surrounded by haters of Israel, from the former Palestine
Liberation Organization, Rashid Khalid to former Jimmy Carter National Security
Advisor, Zbigniew Bazinski. Most famously people became aware of Rev. Jeramiah
Wright whose church Obama attended and where he was married. Wright has been
quoted saying “Them Jews ain’t going to let him talk to me.”
The question of anti-Semitism is
complicated by the fact that Obama has surrounded himself with Jews in the White
House.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Jack
Lew, is Jewish. As is Gene Sperling, the Director of the National Economic
Council. Janet Yellen, the Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve is Jewish as is a
senior advisor, David Plouffe, as well as a dozen others. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s
former chief of staff is Jewish as was his former senior advisor, David Axelrod.
At least fifteen other Jews formerly held high office in the
administration.
For anti-Semites, that would be
“proof” that the White House is “run by Jews”, but that would not only be
absurd, it would ignore the Muslims that Obama has put into positions of power
and influence throughout his administration. Obama's Jewish personnel choices
all share his very liberal views.
I define anti-Semitism as a serious or
general dislike of Jews. It can be either overt or covert. As in most cases in
life, you can make your own conclusion based on a person’s actions, not
words.
There is little doubt, however, that
Obama shares an antipathy to Israel that is widespread among world leaders and
many others. After two thousand years, the reemergence of Israel as a sovereign
state in 1948 has no doubt baffled and irked those who hold Jews in contempt. Up
until the election of Obama Israel had been supported by whoever was in the
White House and understood to be an ally.
Now that he is in the final years of
his presidency, Obama does not have to hide his antipathy to Israel, nor did he
make much effort to do so in this first term.
The White House suggestion that they
might take the two-state issue to the United Nations Security Council reflects
Obama’s pique over Netanyahu’s speech to Congress opposing the Iran nuclear deal
and his reelection. By contrast, his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, is
now in the 11th year of his
four-year term. Who needs elections in Palestine? And the Palestinian Authority
is now linked with Hamas, the Gaza-based terrorist
group.
Seeking United Nations involvement is
a last ditch effort to harm Israel, but it hardly matters what the United
Nations does or does not do because it is the most obscenely anti-Israel
international institution.
What troubles most people,
irrespective of any real or assumed anti-Israel or anti-Semitic element, is
Obama’s pursuit of a deal with the Iranians that would permit them at some point
to make their own nuclear weapons. It quite simply makes no sense to anyone
except Obama. Iran has made no secret of its wish to “wipe Israel off the map.”
Netanyahu left no doubt that Israel
would use military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. In the
past they destroyed such facilities in Iraq and
Syria.
As for the Iranians, they don’t care
how the negotiations turn out. They have gotten a respite from the sanctions and
had funds that were frozen returned; securing money and time to continue their
nuclear ambitions.
I suspect that once Obama returns to
civilian life, we will learn more about his views about race and religion. What
we have learned at this point is that he doesn’t like an America that is a world
power and the leader of the free world. His policy of retreat has caused allies
and enemies alike to distrust him.
Anti-Semitic? Anti-Israel? Regrettably
his words and actions demonstrate that this can be said of Obama with relative
ease.
© Alan Caruba, 2015
1 comment:
"is Obama Anti-semitic?"
is the Pope Catholic?
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