Israel Matzav

Huckabee rips Obama's Middle East policies

Defending his visit to Israel against charges that he is undermining US policy here, former Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee rips President Obumbler for deviating from his own stated policies on Israel.

President Obama’s unprecedented stance toward Israel doesn’t just contravene the past forty years of American policy, it contravenes his own statements as a presidential candidate.

I visited a planned housing development in East Jerusalem that President Obama is insisting not be built because he seems to anticipate that Jerusalem will be divided and this area will go to the Palestinians. Yet in June 2008, candidate Obama told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (“AIPAC”) that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

In 2007, then-Senator Obama assured AIPAC that “we should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests. No Israeli Prime Minister should ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States. We must be partners….” And in 2008, he promised AIPAC that “We will also use all elements of American power to pressure Iran.” But when President Obama announced his new settlement policy, he coupled it with an implied threat that unless the Israelis capitulated, he might retaliate by not doing as much as he could to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. He sounded ominously like Tony Soprano.

In 2008 President Obama also told AIPAC that he was “a true friend of Israel.” He emphasized his “strong commitment to make sure that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow and forever.” He said that “as president, I will work with you to ensure that this bond is strengthened. … I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.” When he said that Israel “can advance the cause of peace” by not “building new settlements” if that was “consistent with its security,” he said nothing about expanding existing settlements, and, more importantly, he spoke as if settlement policy was entirely up to the Israeli government, not the U. S. government.

As a candidate President Obama never told the American people that if he was elected, he would order a draconian freeze on all settlement activity with no exceptions. He never told the American people that he would move U. S. policy backward by reneging on the understanding by Presidents Clinton and Bush that Israel would never give up all settlements, but would keep some close to the 1949 armistice line by swapping land.

But after a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu in May, President Obama announced that, “Settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward.” With whom are the Israelis supposed to move forward? With the Hamas terrorists of the Gaza Strip? With Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas who barely controls the sidewalk in front of his office in the West Bank? Yet President Obama took the ball out of the Palestinians’ court and said that it wasn’t their wanton destruction of life and property that was holding back the peace process, no, it was Israeli construction. Nothing about the Palestinians’ recognizing Israel’s basic right to exist or renouncing terror to move the process forward, no, it was all the fault of those pesky settlements.

In case the Arab world didn’t get that message of “blame the victim” loud and clear, President Obama reiterated it in his major address in Cairo on June 4: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.” Interesting use of the word “legitimacy” to a group of people who don’t accept the legitimacy of Israel herself. A little wink and nod there.

Not only isn’t President Obama helping the peace process, he is hurting it by telling the Palestinians that there is no reason for them to do anything but wait for Israel to make unilateral concessions under American pressure. Such pressure must be contrasted with the partnership we’ve always had with Israel, the one he pledged to continue when he was looking for American votes, not Arab approval.

Indeed.

Wouldn't it be great if more prominent Republicans spoke out against the Obama administration's Middle East policies like they're speaking out against Obamacare? Here's betting that will happen soon.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:12 AM