By Barry Rubin
A reader writes to me that I don’t understand how President Barack Obama is really friendly toward Israel—didn’t he say all those nice things?–and I’m distorting his words because I don’t just like him.
Like many people (half of the U.S. population?) I desperately want to like him because it’s better to have a smart, competent president rather than someone leading toward disaster. But unlike a lot of people I’m willing to face reality. Because facing reality is the first step toward solving problems.
Let me try one more time to give an example—one among many—of the problem with Obama, his policies and his speeches.
The statements Obama makes are meant to be seen as positive toward Israel but aren’t.
Example (I’m paraphrasing) I really care about Israel but don’t you realize that by not making more concessions you are contributing to delegitimization of Israel?
OK. That’s friendly, right?
BUT if the president of the United States doesn’t know that:
Israel let 200,000 Palestinians return in 1993-2000 and gave guns to the PA and passed money to them, etc., and got more terrorism and rejectionism.
Israel withdrew from Sinai and made peace with Egypt and now the peace treaty is being torn up. In September Egypt will get a radical, perhaps Islamist, government. Today Egypt is opening the border with the Gaza Strip. Money and weapons will flow across freely to Hamas and will be fired at Israel one day.
Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon, and then was attacked by Hizballah in 2006. The U.S. government and others promised that they would stop Hizballah from getting more rockets and returning to southern Lebanon. They didn’t. A U.S. official just pointed out that Hizballah now has more rockets than practically any country in the world.
Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and got a Hamas hostile regime that attacks it.
Israel made huge concessions and then is even MORE delegitimized in the West.
And then the president says: So now the solution is to pull out of the West Bank and then everything will be great!
And when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complains you don’t understand why he’s upset?
Your reader is correct. Nice words. That’s President Lead-from-behind’s schtick. Nice words, written by speech writers just out of University, read right off the teleprompter with heartfelt passion, then followed by frantic back-pedaling, right-angle change of direction,and/or a Chicago-style stab in the back.
Thanks for the list of Israel’s “failures to negotiate”. Carter and Obama need to have their noses rubbed in it.
President Obama has his own set of historical facts and he bases his opinions and policies on them.
The rest of the universe has it’s own set of factual and real historical facts which are radically different from the one the present American President is using.
This is why when Barack and Michele Obama signed the guest book to Buckingham Palace this week, and dated that signing, May 24, 2008, no one in the President’s party or even the American journalists accompanying the pair even noticed it or commented on it.
In Barack Obama’s universe you simply accept the perfection of the President even when his is mistaken or wrong, or leave.
“In Barack Obama’s universe you simply accept the perfection of the President even when his is mistaken or wrong, or leave.”
Exactly!
Thank god some bloggers can write. Thanks for this piece
This surely makes great sense to me..