Because I have never lived or worked in Michigan — and also because I root for the Yankees, not the Tigers — I was a bit surprised when Senator Carl Levin of Michigan sent me a letter asking me to vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
“I’m deeply troubled by how the Jewish community is being flooded with inaccurate and sometimes inflammatory attacks on President Obama, claiming that he is not a strong supporter of Israel,” wrote Senator Levin, who apparently got my email from the mailing lists of The Forward newspaper and other Jewish organizations.
For those who do not know what the Yiddish word chutzpah means, this is a pretty good example: those who promised “the audacity of hope” and who delivered the arrogance of hype now ask me to be grateful. The “audacity of hope” is a title Obama stole from his anti-Semitic pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and it really is a bold hope to bet Jews will forget the first three years of Obama’s term and pay attention only to the last three weeks.
Recently, Obama has said how much he loves Israel. He sent Gen. Martin Dempsey to a joint U.S.-Israeli military exercise. This change in tune came after Dempsey and other Obama messengers hammered Israel over many months for even thinking of striking at Iran’s atomic bomb program. Gen. Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs, said he and the U.S. would not be “complicit” with any Israeli military move, using the kind of language one employs for a criminal or rogue state. But now, Dempsey, Obama, and Levin are all smiles because we are in November 2012. It’s election time, and it’s payback time.
Sen. Levin’s cuddly letter does not cancel harsh public statements and deliberately damaging leaks from Obama, Biden, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, General Dempsey, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and so on. It does not cancel Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s top advisor, holding an Iranian confab in the White House the day after Iran and Hezbollah attacked Israeli tourists in Bulgaria. Levin’s letter does not cancel a “senior White House official” telling the New York Times the terror attack was “tit for tat” for Israel striking Iran’s nuclear scientists. Levin’s letter does not erase how the audacious president and his vice president erupted over Israeli apartments in Jerusalem.
Beyond the harsh statements criticizing Israeli military moves, housing plans, and political strategies, there is also the little matter of the Obama-Biden-Levin record of actions on national security and in the Middle East in general.
As part of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Levin has consistently politicized any discussion of intelligence and national security matters. He attacked U.S. intelligence-gathering techniques — like enhanced interrogation — that stopped several major al-Qaeda plots.
Senator Levin led partisan attacks on George Bush, Dick Cheney, and CIA officials who ran programs to monitor terror communications and bank transfers. Levin assailed those who questioned terrorists. Demonized them.
Levin protected inept and negligent CIA chiefs John Deutch and George Tenet, Democratic appointees who helped the CIA lose its operational and counter-terror edge during the 1990s before 9/11. Levin helped protect some of the people who enabled the Arab-Islamic terror of 9/11 and thereafter. Remember Democrat George Tenet telling George Bush that the CIA would only use drones to attack Bin-Laden “over my dead body”?
Levin and other Democrats boast about drone attacks under Obama, attacks which they condemned or tried to stop under Bush. They attacked Bush for “abuse” and “torture” in 2007 and 2008 for interrogating terrorists roughly, getting answers that eventually led to Osama bin Laden.
Levin, like Panetta and Obama, never apologized.
Levin is not alone. Joe Biden was once chairman of the Senate’s international relations committee, and he personally blocked congressional legislation to put pressure on Iran in the 1990s for its nuclear program.
As for President Obama, he is certainly the most anti-Israel president since Jimmy Carter, equaling Carter’s meager one-veto defense of Israel at the UN. Obama stood by, along with Secretary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice for most of the time, when Israel was savaged diplomatically.
Obama, Biden, and Clinton have allowed Islamist Turkey to push Israel out of certain counterterror forums and NATO exercises. Despite this, last week General Dempsey came to Israel for a photo-op and to take credit for programs that were put on line during the Bush administration.
It is no surprise that Obama would employ a Jewish senator to intercede with Jews — we expect a certain cynicism from all politicians, but using a letter from Carl Levin as a sort of “note from the rabbi” will not work. Obama’s real “rabbis,” his spiritual guides and ideological inspirations, have given him anti-American and anti-Israeli sermons over the years, and they include Reverend Jeremiah Wright, terrorist Bill Ayers, and the late Professor Edward Said.
An honest appeal to Jewish Obama supporters should include a letter of support from them.
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