There’s a little war brewing in Algeria and Mali, French-led, against the al Qaeda terrorist groups that are becoming entrenched in the “new” Libya, which is next door to Algeria. The “new” Libya is the afterbirth of the Obama-Jarrett-Rice-Clinton air war against Ghaddafi. The lack of a real national government has allowed Libya to become the latest incubator of Islamic terrorism. The war there is or may be spreading into Algeria. Our president has told us that al Qaeda is “on the run.” He was lying.
Against that backdrop and the usual Arab threats to annihilate the tiny non-Arab state in their midst, Israel is pushing ahead with settlements outside the Green Line. The Palestinian Authority, supposedly Israel’s “partner” for peace, suggested this week that there is no two-state solution, and that Israel must therefore eventually be destroyed.
Maybe President Barack Obama didn’t hear that. Maybe he missed it in his daily blog reading since it wasn’t posted on ESPN and had nothing to do with composite or fake girlfriends, and no one thought to text it to him. At any rate, he didn’t react to it. Instead he reportedly trained his critical eye not on the Palestinian leaders who are threatening Israel, but on Israel’s PM.
US President Barack Obama has stated repeatedly in private conversations that “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are,” regarding Jerusalem’s advancement of new settlement plans, influential Jewish American columnist Jeffrey Goldberg reported Tuesday.
Following the November 29 UN vote to upgrade the Palestinians to non-member observer state status, Israel announced that 3,000 housing units would be built in areas beyond the Green Line, and zoning and planning for thousands of other units throughout Judea and Samaria would be authorized, including in the controversial project between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim called E1.
In his weekly Bloomberg column published on Tuesday, Goldberg wrote: “When informed about the Israeli decision, Obama, who has a famously contentious relationship with the prime minister, didn’t even bother getting angry. He told several people that this sort of behavior on [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu’s part is what he has come to expect, and he suggested that he has become inured to what he sees as self-defeating policies of his Israeli counterpart.”
Maybe Obama knows as much about the real Middle East as he knows about firearms, a subject in which he constantly misuses terms like “clip” instead of “magazine” and mistakes civilian rifles for weapons of war.
Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu noticed Obama’s one-sided criticism. He didn’t appreciate it.
A day after American Jewish columnist Jeffrey Goldberg quoted President Barack Obama as saying that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu does not understand what is in Israel’s best interest, Netanyahu visited the Gaza border on Wednesday and essentially shot back, “Yes I do.”
During the visit to the headquarters of the IDF’s Gaza Division, Netanyahu was shown figures indicating that December was the quietest month in the South – in terms of rocket and terrorist attacks from the Gaza Strip – in the past 12 years, since January 2001.
“I think everyone understands that only Israel’s citizens are those who will be the ones to determine who faithfully represents Israel’s vital interests,” the prime minister said in his first direct response to Obama’s reported criticism.
Netanyahu said over the past four years he had withstood “enormous pressure,” including demands that Israel curb its pressure on Iran, withdraw to the pre- 1967 lines, divide Jerusalem and stop building in the eastern part of the capital.
“We fended off all those pressures, and I will continue to stand firm on Israel’s vital interests for the security of the citizens of Israel,” he declared.
Before his re-election, Barack Obama was always less than friendly to Netanyahu. After his re-election, to suggest that Bibi and the Israeli people don’t know what’s good for them is equal parts arrogant and foolish. Israel is only becoming more isolated because it no longer has a trusted friend in the White House. Instead it has a hostile armchair critic. Israel probably understands that, and the implications that come with it, much better even than Obama himself does.
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