Israel Matzav

Obama tells Jewish leaders Netanyahu not invited until Iran talks conclude

Talk about a closed mind. President Hussein Obama told Jewish leaders last week that Prime Minister Netanyahu will not be invited to the White House until after negotiations with Iran conclude, because... he doesn't want to hear Netanyahu's concerns about the impending deal.

He told the group that a face-to-face meeting at the White House would probably end with Mr. Netanyahu publicly venting his complaints about the president’s policies, particularly his efforts to forge a nuclear agreement with Iran, according to people familiar with the private meeting who would provide details about it only on the condition of anonymity.

So for now, the president said, he would speak with the prime minister over the telephone, and an Oval Office invitation would wait until after the June 30 deadline for negotiating the details of the Iran deal.

...

Instead, the White House is engaged in an aggressive effort to assuage the concerns of American Jewish groups and pro-Israel members of Congress over the nuclear agreement with Iran, and to limit the potential political fallout for Democrats of what has become a bitter rift in the American and Israeli relationship.

Haaretz adds:

Obama spent an hour with leaders of various major Jewish organizations during the day's first meeting, described by the Washington Post as "positive" and "very moving."

Among the attendes were representatives from civil defense groups like the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, umbrella groups like the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Federations of North America, pro-Israel groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and J Street, and the major religious streams.

One of the meeting's attendees told the Post that the president was "heartfelt about his connection to Israel."

Another said that “the president talked about how deeply he feels about Israel and the Jewish people and anti-Semitism. It was not just about Iran. It was much, much deeper in terms of the president sharing with us how he felt."

The New York Times article, the Haaretz article and the Washington Post article cited by Haaretz strike me as White House spin of this meeting, part of which is an attempt to make it sound less bad than it was by mixing it up with this meeting.

Please don't fall for the spin.

Labels: American Jewish leadership, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Iranian nuclear threat

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:23 PM