Israel Matzav: The hallmark of Obama's foreign policy

Monday, July 13, 2009

The hallmark of Obama's foreign policy

Anne Bayefsky rips the Obumbler some new body parts. Reflecting on Obama's severe tongue-lashing of Christian Africa in Ghana over the weekend, and comparing it with Obama's fawning speech in Egypt last month, Bayefsky pegs the hallmark of Obama's foreign policy as "stroking Muslim and Arab nations." And she continues to take him down from there.

Before the Muslim world Obama donned the role of apologist-in-chief. Over and over again his examples of shortfalls in the protection of rights and freedoms were American: the "prison at Guantanamo Bay," "rules on charitable giving [that] have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation," impediments to the "choice" of Muslim women to shroud their bodies.

Christian Africa was to be treated to no such self-flagellation. In a rare tongue-lashing for Africans from any American president, he chastised: "It's easy to point fingers and to pin the blame of these problems on others. Yes, a colonial map that made little sense helped to breed conflict ... But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy ... or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants ... tribalism and patronage and nepotism ... and ... corruption."

He might equally have said to the Arab and Muslim world: "It's easy to scapegoat Israel and blame your problems on the presence of Jews--albeit on a fraction of 1% of the territory inhabited by the Arab world--but Israel is not responsible for poverty, illiteracy, torture, trafficking, slavery and oppression rampant across your countries." But he did not.

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In a Christian African nation he said, "If we are honest, for far too many Africans, conflict is a part of life, as constant as the sun. There are wars over land and wars over resources. And it is still far too easy for those without conscience to manipulate whole communities into fighting among faiths and tribes."

To the Arab and Muslim world he could have said: "Since the day of Israel's birth Arab and Muslim countries have made conflict with Israel a part of life, warring over land and manipulating whole communities into fighting in the name of Islam to render the area Judenrein."

Instead, he turned on the only democracy in the Middle East and said the presence of Jews on Arab-claimed territory--settlements--is an affront to be "stopped." It didn't matter that agreements require ultimate ownership of this territory to be determined by negotiation or that apartheid Palestine is hardly a worthy pursuit.

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Ghanaians will likely turn the other cheek, secure enough to take it and even be grateful for the spotlight. But Obama's double-standard is not a victimless crime. The disparity between the scolding he gave in Ghana and the love-in he held in Cairo illuminates an incoherent and dangerous agenda.

In his lofty, but empty, rhetoric in Ghana, Obama promised "we must stand up to inhumanity in our midst," pledged "a commitment ... to sanction and stop" warmongers and embraced the Zimbabwe non-governmental organization that "braved brutal repression to stand up for the principle that a person's vote is their sacred right."

These are devastating words for Iranians struggling valiantly to keep the hope of democracy alive but forced to bear witness to the contradiction. Betrayed, they have watched the Obama administration pledge to move forward on negotiations with illegally ensconced Iranian thugs--at the very same time their victims are being rounded up, tortured and readied for show-trials in advance of certain execution.