Israel Matzav

Oy vey: JPost's Tova Lazaroff gets it really, really wrong

This is what passes for 'analysis' at the JPost these days.

In the face of the Arab Spring, with the turbulence and body counts out of Syria and Egypt, it seems almost old-fashioned to consider this conflict as a major source of instability in the region.

Yet Obama outlined halting Iran’s nuclear program and the conflict as his two top foreign policy priorities.

“While these issues are not the cause of all the region’s problems, they have been a major source of instability for far too long, and resolving them can help serve as a foundation for a broader peace,” Obama said.

But there is an opposite side of the coin to this startling linkage, which speaks of the depth to which Obama shares Israel’s belief that an Iranian nuclear bomb would pose an existential threat to the State of Israel, as well as to his own country and the world.

The Iranian regime, which called for Israel’s demise, had also declared the United States as its enemy, and killed its citizens and soldiers, Obama explained.

In the past, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has hammered home comparisons between the Iranian threat and the Holocaust, to underscore the danger Tehran poses to Israel.

...

In Obama’s view, when it comes to existential threats, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict threatens to destroy the Jewish state. There are those in Israel who believe that the opposite is true – that the creation of a Palestinian state will doom the Jewish state.

But Obama in his speech said: “Friends of Israel, including the United States, must recognize that Israel’s security as a Jewish and democratic state depends upon the realization of a Palestinian state.”

...

But his core message, at least for the Israeli people, was not the detailing of his vision or even the fact that he believes in the two-state solution.

The message for those who have doubted the centrality of Israel to American foreign policy is the linkage of common interests between two old allies.

How is this wrong? Let me count the ways....

1. It revives the discredited doctrine of 'linkage,' which claims that the Iranian nuclear threat cannot be solved without 'solving' the Israeli-'Palestinian' conflict (first). One has absolutely zero connection to the other. The Iranian desire to extirpate the Jewish state and murder all of its Jews has absolutely no connection to the 'Palestinian' desire to extirpate the Jewish state, murder all of its Jews and take over its land. You don't see the Iranians telling the 'Palestinians' that they're going to warn them so that they can escape the bomb, do you? No, they're going to make 'martyrs' out of the 'Palestinians' just like all of the Arab countries have done for the last 65 years.

2. It's not 'old-fashioned' to continue to believe that the Israeli-'Palestinian' conflict is the central conflict in the region - Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Jordan notwithstanding - it's downright stupid and it's being willfully blind to reality. It also results in resources being wasted on 'negotiations' that are leading nowhere when they should be devoted to saving lives.

3. If Obama truly shared Israel's concern that an Iranian bomb poses an existential threat to Israel, and he truly cared about Israel, Congress would not have had to drag him kicking and screaming into having sanctions, and he would not have resisted implementing them. 

4. Obama's not comparing the threat to Israel from the 'Palestinians' to the threat to Israel from Iran. He's comparing the threat FROM Israel to the 'Palestinians' to the threat to Israel from Iran.

5. If Netanyahu compared the Iranian nuclear threat to the Holocaust, and Obama compares the threat to the 'Palestinians' from Israel to the Iranian nuclear threat, is Obama once again equating the Holocaust to the 'Palestinians' plight?

6. It's not the Israeli-'Palestinian' conflict that threatens to destroy the Jewish state. It's the 'Palestinians' and the Iranian nuclear threat. Separately. We can beat the 'Palestinians,' but only if we don't give them our strategic assets.

7. Israel's security as a Jewish democratic state does not depend upon a 'Palestinian' state. It depends upon Israel resisting the temptation to give in to Obama's pressure and give the heart of our country away to the 'Palestinian' terrorists. The 'demographic bombshell' has been debunked time and time again.

8. Obama has done everything in his power to undermine the centrality of our relationship with the United States. Obama announced that Israel should return to the 1949 armistice lines. Obama spent his whole first time trying to impose a 'settlement freeze' on us, in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Obama attempted to undermine the possibility of Israel having a Right-wing government at every step. He attempted to appoint the likes of Chas Freeman, and did appoint the likes of  Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and Chuck Hagel to powerful positions that affect Israel. No US President - not even Jimmy Carter - has treated Israel as badly as Obama. Now he's trying to accomplish the same thing through charm.

Do I need to say more?  With 'friends' like this, who needs enemies?

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Iranian nuclear threat, Middle East peace process, US-Israel relationship

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:53 PM