Israel Matzav

How has Obama harmed Israel? Let me count the ways

Actually, the truth is that President Obama has done more to legitimize the delegitimizers of Israel than any other president in the history of the Jewish state.

For instance, one of his opening foreign policy moves was to join — for the first time — the UN Human Rights Council, allowing the full weight of American membership to boost the credibility of this viciously anti-Israel body.

When the president decided to join the Council he knew full well that the body organized every regular session around a permanent agenda of ten items, one directed only to Israel-bashing and another to the remaining (unspecified) 192 UN member states. But the administration claimed that it joined the Council to reform it from the inside during a five-year deadline imposed by the General Assembly. The reform scheme went down in flames last June, and the agenda remained unchanged. What was the president’s response to the ritualized Jew-bating that carries on unabated in a global forum in the name of human rights? He is now actively seeking a second term on the Council for the United States.

Not once did President Obama make the equal treatment of the Jewish state a condition for remaining on this “human rights” body — notwithstanding that the whole foundation of the UN Charter is the “equal rights of nations large and small.”

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And as for Iran, President Obama’s use of the United Nations has moved the country in only one direction — inexorably closer to obtaining nuclear weapons. President Obama was the first U.S. president to preside over a meeting of the UN Security Council in September 2009, and he personally took the opportunity of controlling the Council agenda to tie nuclear non-proliferation together with nuclear disarmament. His move had the predictable effect of setting back non-proliferation efforts by giving Iran one more excuse to delay, while disarming America moved to center stage. The sanctions regime belatedly adopted by the Council has been an incontrovertible failure.

At rock bottom, the president’s interview makes one claim more poisonous to Israel’s welfare than all others. He argues that if Israel uses military force against Iranian nuclear sites, then the timeline for any negative consequences will start with Israel — not Iran. Obama urges Netanyahu to think about “the profound costs of any military action,” places the focus on “potential unintended consequences” of Israel’s actions, and describes the move as libel to be a “distraction in which Iran suddenly can portray itself as the victim.”

This is not the statement of an ally at a turning point in world history, with the most dangerous country on Earth on the verge of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapon. Israel’s actions would be taken in self-defense. They would not be the starting point. Israel and the civilized world, in the crosshairs of this leading state sponsor of terrorism and its genocidal ambitions, are the real victims and any claim to the contrary would be a lie — not a distraction. To suggest that Israel will be responsible for the economic costs of seriously slowing or ending Iran’s race towards nuclear weapons places the shoe exactly on the wrong foot, and diminishes the much higher cost of Iranian victory.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Iranian nuclear threat, United Nations Human Rights Council

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:26 AM