Israel Matzav

White House tries again to claim that it didn't snub Netanyahu

The White House has tried once again to claim that it did not snub Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during a White House visit last week.

"I'm puzzled by the notion that somehow it's a bad deal to get two hours with the president almost entirely alone," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

"That doesn't seem like a lot of punishment to me."

On Sunday, another senior White House official, David Axelrod, had insisted that no snub was intended to Netanyahu, but added that friends such as Israel and the United States sometimes needed to talk "bluntly" to one another.

It isn't until you compare it with how Obama has treated every other World leader except for the Dalai Lama.

Anyone want to photoshop Netanyahu into that picture so that we can have a real picture of the way he was treated last week?

What's going on, of course, is that Obama is in hot water with Congress with 327 of the House's 435 members - obviously including many Democrats - having signed a letter urging him to 'reinforce' America's relationship with Israel. And over at al-Guardian, the incredulous Arabist conspiracy theorists have attributed that letter to the Evil Israel Lobby.

America's main pro-Israel lobby group is mobilising members of Congress to pressure the White House over its bitter public confrontation with Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

The move, by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), appears aimed at exploiting differences in the Obama administration as it decides how to use the crisis around settlement building in Jerusalem to press Israel towards concessions to kickstart peace negotiations.

Aipac has persuaded more than three-quarters of the members of the US House of Representatives to sign a letter calling for an end to public criticism of Israel and urging the US to "reinforce" its relationship with the Jewish state.

The open letter, which has been circulating among members of Congress for the last week, says that while it is recognised that there will be differences between the two countries, they should be kept behind closed doors. "Our view is that such differences are best resolved quietly, in trust and confidence," it says.

But of course, Congress doesn't need AIPAC to draft letters for it, and the letter was drafted in Congress.

Al-Guardian goes on to explain that Obama 'cannot' back down.

Robert Malley, a former special assistant to President Bill Clinton for Arab-Israeli affairs, said the administration's decision to take a once routine disagreement over settlement construction in East Jerusalem and turn it in to a confrontation is a reflection of the determination in the White House.

"This episode tells us more about the past and the future than the present. It's a reflection of the accumulated frustration and mistrust of the Netanyahu government by the White House. For the future, they're headed for a collision on the pace and nature of peace negotiations," he said. "We're seeing determination."

A source, who is consulted by administration officials on Israel policy but did not wish to be named, said that having chosen to take Netanyahu on, Obama cannot afford to back away. "The administration's credibility is at stake – in Israel and the Arab world. Netanyahu thought he had the better of it last year after he humiliated the president by rejecting his demand for a settlement freeze. If the administration does not follow through on this, or reaches some compromise that takes the heat off the Israelis, I suspect it will be almost impossible for us to get anything off the ground," he said.

Over at Arutz Sheva they're telling a different story.

[Gibbs] also denied a rumor in the media that the United States was prepared to refrain from vetoing a possible United Nations resolution against Israel’s building for Jews in areas of Jerusalem that were restored to the Jewish State in 1967 but are not recognized by United States as being under Israeli sovereignty. Approximately 300,000 Jews live in the neighborhoods, which include Ramot, French Hill and Gilo.

If the report was a trial balloon, the response appears to have let all the air out as Cabinet ministers line up behind Prime Minister Netanyahu to refuse to agree to a temporary building freeze.

Most of President Obama’s advisers have taken a pro-Palestinian Authority stand, backing its claims to sovereignty over part of the city. Foreign media have reported that President Obama’s public stand against Israel, beginning with his speech in Cairo last June that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are “illegitimate,” has placed him out on a limb.

“The administration's credibility is at stake,”one source reportedly said.

Where does this all end? My sense is that the Obama administration is trying to feel around for how much it can get away with pressuring Israel. They are hoping to build on their health care victory.

But the health care victory is starting to come apart as one public company after another is required under the US Securities Laws to disclose how much Obamacare is going to cost it. The costs may well lead to another recession or to the cancellation of some Obamacare provisions. Democrats in Congress are now wondering how smart it was to support Obamacare. They are less likely to be willing to go to the wall for the administration against a country whose support is among the strongest in the United States.

Additionally, many Jewish donors to the Democratic party are unhappy (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). One example of a former Obama supporter who is furious with Obama is former New York Mayor Ed Koch (Hat Tip: Jammie Wearing Fool).

I have not heard or read statements criticizing the president by New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand or many other supporters of Israel for his blatantly hostile attitude toward Israel and his discourtesy displayed at the White House. President Obama orchestrated the hostile statements of Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, voiced by Biden in Israel and by Clinton in a 43-minute telephone call to Bibi Netanyahu, and then invited the latter to the White House to further berate him. He then left Prime Minister Netanyahu to have dinner at the White House with his family, conveying he would only be available to meet again if Netanyahu had further information - read concessions - to impart.

It is unimaginable that the President would treat any of our NATO allies, large or small, in such a degrading fashion. That there are policy differences between the U.S. and the Netanyahu government is no excuse. Allies often disagree, but remain respectful.

In portraying Israel as the cause of the lack of progress in the peace process, President Obama ignores the numerous offers and concessions that Israel has made over the years for the sake of peace, and the Palestinians' repeated rejections of those offers. Not only have Israel's peace proposals, which include ceding virtually the entire West Bank and parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, been rejected, but each Israeli concession has been met with even greater demands, no reciprocity, and frequently horrific violence directed at Israeli civilians. Thus, Prime Minister Netanyahu's agreement to suspend construction on the West Bank - a move heralded by Secretary of State Clinton as unprecedented by an Israeli government - has now led to a demand that Israel also halt all construction in East Jerusalem, which is part of Israel's capital. Meanwhile, Palestinians are upping the ante, with violent protests in Jerusalem and elsewhere. And the Obama administration's request that our Arab allies make some conciliatory gesture towards Israel has fallen on deaf ears.

...

In the 1930s, the Jewish community and its leadership, with few exceptions, were silent when their coreligionists were being attacked, hunted down, incarcerated and slaughtered. Ultimately 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust. The feeling in the U.S. apparently was that Jews who criticized our country's actions and inactions that endangered the lives of other Jews would be considered disloyal, unpatriotic and displaying dual loyalty, so many Jews stayed mute. Never again should we allow that to occur. We have every right to be concerned about the fate of the only Jewish nation in the world, which if it had existed during the 1930s and thereafter, would have given sanctuary to any Jew escaping the Nazi holocaust and taken whatever military action it could to save Jews not yet in the clutches of the Nazis. We who have learned the lessons of silence, Jews and Christians alike, must speak up now before it is too late.

So I ask again, where are our Senators, Schumer and Gillibrand? And, where are the voices, not only of the 31 members of the House and 14 Senators who are Jewish, but the Christian members of the House and Senate who support the State of Israel? Where are the peoples' voices? Remember the words of Pastor Niemoller, so familiar that I will not recite them, except for the last line, "Then they came for me, and by that time, there was no one left to speak up."

Supporters of Israel who gave their votes to candidate Obama - 78 percent of the Jewish community did - believing he would provide the same support as John McCain, this is the time to speak out and tell the President of your disappointment in him. It seems to me particularly appropriate to do so on the eve of the Passover. It is one thing to disagree with certain policies of the Israeli government. It is quite another to treat Israel and its prime minister as pariahs, which only emboldens Israel's enemies and makes the prospect of peace even more remote.

I believe that - especially with midterm elections rapidly approaching - Obama has only a brief window to try to pressure Israel. That window is rapidly closing and will not open again until at least November. That's why Obama is trying so hard to pressure Israel now. If I were advising Netanyahu, I would consider finding an elegant way to cancel that trip to Washington the week after next. There's no sense in making himself available for more abuse. Ed Koch will take care of things for now.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:11 AM