Israel Matzav

Waxman blames Republicans for Obama's Israel problem

I finally found a Democrat who doesn't blame Bush. Henry Waxman (D-Cal) writes an op-ed in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal in which he blames 'Republicans' for President Obama's poor standing among supporters of Israel.

Since the recent meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, the two leaders are more clearly on the same page than ever before. Both spoke eloquently of bonds that they call “unbreakable” and “unshakable.” The peace process is also on a much steadier footing, with the burden having appropriately shifted to President Abbas to decide whether he will drop his preconditions and enter direct talks.

On Iran, which is the primary existential threat facing Israel, both Israeli and American officials have talked openly about how our governments are closely strategizing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. This goal has taken an enormous amount of the president’s personal attention, in talking directly to leaders in Russia, China, Europe and other key nations to advance unprecedented sanctions adopted by the U.N. Security Council in June that will block arms sales to Iran, freeze Revolutionary Guard assets and authorize searches of Iranian cargo vessels. The president also signed into law the Iran sanctions bill, which imposes sanctions on insurance, financing and shipping companies that assist Iran in developing its energy sector. This approach will inflict significant economic hardship on the Iranian regime and hopefully get them to see they would be better off not pursuing nuclear weapons.

This administration has enhanced Israel’s qualitative military edge. Joint military exercises, sales of the new F-35 fighter jet and $205 million for the Iron Dome missile defense system against Hezbollah rockets reflect our solid military ties.

The president is also leading the campaign against efforts to delegitimize Israel. At the United Nations, the United States has opposed action on the Goldstone Report, opposed calls for international investigations of the flotilla incident, and fought the anti-Israel bias at the U.N. Human Rights Council and other U.N. bodies.

In this context, I am alarmed by the continuing effort to paint such an extremely negative picture of the president and even of Democrats in Congress.

...

No, President Obama is not a Muslim; he is a Christian. No, Prime Minister Netanyahu did not enter the White House through a back entrance. This “incident” did not happen, and it has been refuted by the Israeli ambassador and by the prime minister himself. No, the United States did not refuse Israeli nuclear scientists visas — Israel and the State Department have both denied it. No, it was Turkey, not the United States, that withdrew landing rights from Israel at U.S. bases in Turkey. The United States objected and boycotted a joint NATO exercise Turkey planned to host.

I cannot help but think that some of this is being orchestrated by Republican partisans to gain support and undermine Democrats. While this strategy may seek a short-term political advantage, it would be a long-term loss for the U.S.-Israel relationship. Bipartisan support for Israel has been a bulwark of U.S. ties to Israel since its founding. It is a tradition that is in the moral and strategic interests of both our nations.

As Americans who care about the United States and Israel, we must keep our eye on the essential issues that matter most to Israel’s security and survival. Even though I have been critical of some of the president’s actions, I believe the president agrees with us on these core issues and has acted accordingly.

In other words, Waxman asks us to ignore everything that happened between January 2009 and July 2010 and just look at the 'bliss' of the last two months (in the earlier part of the article, he admits to 'mistakes' like the reference to the Holocaust in the Cairo speech without a reference to Jewish history, and the demand for a 'settlement freeze including east Jerusalem).

But even among the items that Waxman enumerates, he is being disingenuous. For example, he refers to Obama signing the Iran Sanctions Act into law, but fails to mention that Obama opposed it at every turn, and only agreed to sign it into law after it passed by veto-overriding margins in both Houses and after he got very broad waiver powers. He mentions the sale of the F-35 to Israel, but ignores the cancellation of the F-22 (which could have been delivered by now and was the perfect fighter jet for attacking Iran) and the continuing refusal to allow Israel to install its own technology on the F-35. He says that the administration opposed calls for international investigations into the flotilla incident, but ignores the fact that he and his UN ambassador 'persuaded' Israel to agree to the Security Council investigation a couple of weeks ago.

Do I need to go on?

Hopefully, the Jewish community in the US is starting to figure out who Barack Hussein Obama really is. It's long since overdue.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:47 PM