Israel Matzav

It's the Jewish money, stupid!

You will recall that earlier this week, I posted a video circulated by the Obama campaign that featured Israeli government leaders - including Prime Minister Netanyahu - praising Barack Hussein Obama.

To refresh your memories, let's go to the videotape.



At Yisrael HaYom, Ruthie Blum explains to us why the video was made. It's not about the Jewish vote. It's about the Jewish money. And Prime Minister Netanyahu played right into Obama's hands in making it.

It's a neat trick.

In his first three years in office, Obama has emerged as the most openly hostile U.S. president Israel has ever known. This is no surprise, given his oft-stated commitment to "outreach and dialogue" with sworn enemies across the globe, chief among them Iran.

Nor is it peculiar that, in spite of the above, Obama continued to take the Jewish vote for granted. After all, it is no secret that American Jews -- even many who do care about Israel's fate and survival -- would rather be nuked by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's mullahs than cast their ballots for a Republican candidate.

What Obama didn't bank on, however, was getting a cold financial shoulder from Jewish backers he assumed he would have in his pocket, along with their millions. Imagine his horror when figures like TV and media magnate Haim Saban, of “Power Rangers” fame, decided to cut a substantial amount of his support for the very president he had helped usher into the White House. Nor was Saban the only Jew to grow uncomfortable with Obama's blatant aggression against Israel in word and deed.

What Obama and his team came to grasp was that, of all the factors which had handed him a landslide into the Oval Office, an empty till was not one of them.

...

But it should also serve as a lesson to Netanyahu and co. for being so foolish as to have made public statements about Obama's undying loyalty and friendship which they knew to be patently false.

Though it is, and always has been, par for the course for Israeli leaders to behave with deference to the U.S. administration, it is neither necessary nor desirable for them to bend over backwards to defend American moves that run contrary to Israeli interests. Netanyahu's tight spot with a president who was caught on tape commiserating with counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy about having to "deal with" Netanyahu on a regular basis deserves no small degree of empathy.

But his response to it has been worse than counter-productive. Going out of his way (with the help of Oren) to laud Obama at synagogues and AIPAC conferences is taking the need to stress the U.S.'s friendship way beyond the call of duty. And all it has accomplished is to provide the president with grist for his PR mill.

After the US election in 1992, someone from the media asked Yitzhak Shamir - who had lost his own reelection bid a few months earlier - how he felt about US President George H.W. Bush losing. Shamir smiled and said he was satisfied. Hopefully, Netanyahu will be honest enough to say the same when and if Obama loses.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Campaign 2012

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:46 AM