Israel Matzav

Obama to try to bury Israel in Cairo speech

On Thursday, June 4, the day before the 42nd anniversary of the Six Day War's outbreak, American President Barack Hussein Obama will attempt to set in motion a process that will push Israel back to the armistice lines of 1949, if not to those of June 4, 1967.

Expectations are high for Obama’s Middle East visit, which begins with a meeting with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh on Wednesday to discuss the Arab peace initiative and relations with Iran before he arrives in Egypt the next day.

The goal of two states living side by side, with the holy sites in Jerusalem under international jurisdiction, is to receive a new push by Obama.

“Some of the things that you will hear in the speech are returning to proven and effective policies and initiatives that have . . . served the national interest well in the past,” said Denis McDonough, Obama’s foreign policy adviser.

The only small consolation in an otherwise dreary article is this:

Administration officials say privately that Obama has given himself two years for a diplomatic breakthough on a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, despite the opposition of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to America’s minimum demand for a freeze on all settlement building in disputed territory.

So if we can survive two years, he'll leave us alone? Maybe, if there's anything left. Within two years, Iran will be a nuclear power, and it is clear to all of us here that Israel will be left to confront that prospect alone.

Not wanting to risk a backlash from American Jewry, Obama will visit the Buchenwald concentration camp later in the trip. But Obama's great uncle Charles Payne, who was among the American troops who liberated Buchenwald, has ripped him for that insincere gesture in an interview in Der Spiegel (Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit):

SPIEGEL: Mr. Payne, early in June your great-nephew, President Barack Obama, will visit the former concentration camp Buchenwald, which you helped liberate at the end of the war. Will he be travelling in your footsteps?

Charles Payne: I don't buy that. I was quite surprised when the whole thing came up and Barack talked about my war experiences in Nazi Germany. We had never talked about that before. This is a trip that he chose, not because of me I'm sure, but for political reasons.

Israel doesn't excite American Jewry much anymore. Maybe the Holocaust will?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:56 AM