Israel Matzav

'For ideological reasons, Obama doesn’t like the Israel that exists. Period.'

John Podhoretz reviews a new book by Michael Oren - release date June 23 - in which Oren recounts his four years as Israeli ambassador to Washington. What's unique about this book is that except for Oren, all the players are still in place. Podhoretz reports that reading the book will convince you that Obama's hostility isn't just to Netanyahu - it's a visceral hostility to the very existence of the State of Israel (Hat Tip: Jonathan Schanzer).

It’s not that there’s lots of breaking news in “Ally” that will startle people. Rather, it makes news on almost every page with its incredibly detailed account of the root hostility of the Obama administration toward the Jewish state.

What makes the details especially credible is that Oren is no flame-breathing Israeli right-winger but very much (and at times distressingly) an Establishment creature and one, moreover, who makes it clear he drank the Obama hope-and-change Kool-Aid in 2008. (Indeed, he now serves in Israel’s Knesset not as a member of Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud but of the new centrist Kulanu party.)

On major matters, the administration seemed to hold Israel accountable for problems it had nothing to do with.

Example: The Palestinian Authority made moves toward seeking a declaration of statehood at the United Nations in 2011, which would’ve triggered a law shutting down their US mission and suspending all aid to the PA and to UN agencies that recognized Palestine.

In response, Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides called Oren into his fancy Foggy Bottom office and screamed at him: “You don’t want the f - - - ing UN to collapse because of your f - - - - ing conflict with the Palestinians, and you don’t want the f - - - king Palestinian Authority to fall apart either.”

To which Oren replied that Israel didn’t want the United Nations to collapse “but there are plenty of Tea Party types who would, and no shortage of Congress members who are wondering why they have to keep paying Palestinians who spit in the president’s eye.” He reports that Nides “slumped into his Louis XVth chair.”

Oren also writes about bizarrely petty offenses. In 2010, Obama left Israel off a list of countries he mentioned as having helped in the wake of the Haiti earthquake when it was the first nation in the world to dispatch relief teams and get them to the disaster sites — because the president was angry about something having to do with the peace process.

Even when the administration is acting friendly, Oren senses it is doing so not out of genuine fellow feeling but to keep Israel close — hugging it to prevent it from acting, especially when it came to Iran’s nuclear program.

Would love to read this.... Most pro-Israel administration evah? Keep fooling yourselves American Jews.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Michael Oren, Obama's obsession with Israel, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:32 PM