'Engage' with Khatami but not with Mort Klein
In Monday's JPost, Anne Bayefsky rips the Obumbler for excluding Zionist Organization of America's Mort Klein from last Monday's 'Jewish leadership' meeting. The meeting, however, did not showcase the president's trademark engagement and dialogue routine. Instead, he decided to cherry pick his Jewish audience to include pro-Obama newcomers with little support in the mainstream Jewish world, such as J Street, while blackballing the Zionist Organization of America. The oldest pro-Israel group in the United States, with a Washington office second in size only to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was not a voice Obama wanted to hear. This leaves the president willing to engage Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but not ZOA President Mort Klein.The problem is that there are a lot of American Jews out there who love this. They include the intermarried and others who are less likely to have a connection to Israel, the 'Judaism is Liberalism' crowd and other uber-Leftists and self-hating Jews (an example is here). Obama plays to that crowd: The Rahm Emmanuels, David Axelrods, Bob Wexlers and Gary Ackermans. Some of them even claim to be observant.
The growing alarm in the Jewish community was also something the White House was bent on covering up. They refused to put the meeting on the President's public schedule until it was outed. The White House demanded strict confidentiality and issued a terse couple of lines that it occurred when it was all over.
BUT THERE is no papering over the distressing reality that emerged. The president told his listeners that he preferred putting daylight between the United States and Israel. His reported justification: "there was no light between the US and Israeli positions for the last eight years, and no progress was made."
Evidently, unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, 21 settlements and 9,000 residents counts for nothing. The Palestinian terrorist leadership and street have refused to accept a Jewish state for the past eight years (and the previous 53) because the United States did not add sufficiently to Israel's isolation.
The president apparently believes that the Palestinians are more likely to end terrorism, incitement to violence and rampant antisemitism if the United States applies more pressure on their victims. Even if Obama doesn't get it, Mahmoud Abbas does. He is now refusing to negotiate anything with the new Israeli government until Obama's settlement conditions are met.
During the meeting, the president repeatedly described his new policy in terms of one of Yasser Arafat's favorite mantras, "even-handedness." That's diplotalk for a moral equivalence between an Arab war against Jewish self-determination launched from the day of Israel's birth decades before any "occupation" and the conditions of third-generation Palestinian "refugees" kept in limbo pending Israel's destruction. But Obama's even-handedness was no slip of the tongue. In his Cairo speech, the president equated the Holocaust to Palestinian "dislocation."
The president promoted his strategy of putting hard public "pressure" on Israel as a means to build more credibility with Arab states. He must have meant the kind of credibility that comes from his policy of leaving an "open door" to Iran after its discredited election.
It's strange that whenever Israel Radio reports on the latest fight between Netanyahu and Obama, we keep being told that Netanyahu is fighting with America's 'popular President.' The truth is that the only thing that is saving Israel from a lot more pressure right now is Obama's declining popularity.
A couple people asked me today whether I believe Netanyahu will keep standing up to Obama. As long as over 90% of Israel's Jewish voters believe that he should keep doing so (which is probably the case right now), absolutely.
/Just a few random thoughts for a Sunday night.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:40 PM
3 Comments:
As long as Ehud Olmert is with the 90%, Netanyahu won't have problems with Obama.
The US President has failed to catch fire not only with the Israeli Left, but with Kadima.
Heh
"When an administration sends a US ambassador back to Syria though it is still listed as a key state sponsor of terrorism, hosts terrorist kingpins pursuing Israel's annihilation, and was caught trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, the story is far-fetched alright, but true."
This brief mention by Bayefsky understates the case against Syria considerably. Following are some translated excerpts from an interview of an Iraqi jidadist who received terrorist and militant training in a Syrian (state sponsored) mujahideen camp, located in Damascus, together with some interspersed questions from the interviewer:
"The Syrians wanted to instill in us ideas about religion and faith, about Iraq, the situation there, the occupation forces and the regime."
Was this training camp state owned?
"Of course, ..., a state owned training camp ... [owned by] Syrian intelligence.
"After the religious training, which lasted 35 days, we completed training in assassinations, ..., placing bombs, booby trapping, ... We completed all this in three months in Damascus, Syria and after that we returned to Iraq."
Did they teach you how to kidnap and slaughter there?
"Yes, sir."
What was the purpose of slaughtering?
"... they put into our heads the idea that this should horrify people so that they would not do what we don't want them to do."
This horrific slaughtering was for intimidation?
"Yes, sir."
Did you slaughter human beings in Syria?
"No, sir, ..., they brought us animals to teach us the speed and strength required."
Merely one example of others still that could be hi-lighted, but something of a poignant one. Again, that's a state sponsored Syrian training camp, to murder, slaughter and therein eliminate and intimidate.
Syria. Bashar al-Assad. Diplomacy under an Obama administration, masked by the latter purported "realism."
It aint the issue of intermarried
it aint the issue of observance
it is the issue of Zionism
For some crazy reason many American Jews dont KNOW actual history...
They have become brainwashed by the press & the kumbaya crowd that the fault lay with the "expansionist israel"
Many in Jewish circles dont know squat about the middle east...
Nor real American History...
To be un-pc, most American Jews are morons fighting for the best seats on the cattle cars while surrounding themselves with lattes, flat screens and new bmw's...
American Jews have forgotten history and in many cases never learned it...
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