Obama gives Jordan's Abdullah the Israel treatment
Just last night, I reported on how President Hussein Obama has been giving 'our friends, the Saudis' the Israel treatment. Now, he's giving it to Jordan's King Abdullah II.
The White House on Monday said President Barack Obama
would not meet with close ally King Abdullah of Jordan -- who is
currently in Washington -- because of scheduling problems.
"The president regrets that he is unable to meet with
him personally on this visit due to scheduling conflicts, including the
State of the Union address," a White House spokesperson said.
On Tuesday, Obama will deliver his final annual address
to a joint session of Congress, a set piece of the U.S. political
calendar.
The White House and Jordanian officials said Abdullah would instead meet with Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday.
He met with Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday.
Kerry and Abdullah discussed the fight against the
Islamic State and "efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace
negotiations," a diplomat said.
Abdullah also met with Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who
expressed his "deep appreciation... for Jordan's continued
contributions to regional counter-ISIL efforts," Pentagon spokesman
Peter Cook said.
He was referring to the self-proclaimed Islamic State
group, which has seized large chunks of territory in Iraq and Syria and
declared a caliphate ruled in accordance with Islamic law, or sharia.
Obama "looks forward to the opportunity to meet with His Majesty in the near future," the White House official said.
Obama and Abdullah last met in Washington almost a year ago.
On Twitter, The Israel Project's Omri Ceren has assured me that the White House knows exactly what's going on in 'Southern Syria' (i.e. Jordan).
In an interview with Sean Hannity, Mark Steyn argues that Barack Obama is worse - far worse - than Neville Chamberlain.
Sean started by cross-cutting Barack Obama on Tuesday with Neville
Chamberlain in 1938. But I thought that comparison was unfair to
Chamberlain. He was an honorable man who loved his country and just
happened to get the greatest issue of the day wrong. You can't say the
same of Obama:
Steyn said he thinks what President Barack Obama did
is "significantly worse" than what former British prime minister Neville
Chamberlain did. He also stated that he doesn't think the president was
negotiating on behalf of the United States.
"I think what happened at these talks is that he and the Iranians
were in a sense negotiating together to anoint Iran as the regional
power in the Middle East and to facilitate Iran's re-entry, the biggest
planetary sponsor of terrorism, to facilitate its re-entry into the
global community," Steyn said.
"That's what Obama was there doing."
I think the nuclear issue was a mere pretext, a Hitchcockian
McGuffin. Iran will be a nuclear state, and very soon. The joke
inspections regime - under which Teheran can block any inspections for
the best part of a month - will facilitate the nuclearization of Iran
and prevent anyone who objects to it - such as Israel - from doing
anything about it. That's a given.
But that's not what the talks were about. Obama's vision of the
post-American Middle East sees Iran as the dominant power, and that's
what the negotiations were there to finesse. As I said to Sean, Obama's
belief that American power and influence has been bad for the world
extends beyond America itself to America's allies. So on missile defense
he takes the side of Russia over US allies like Poland and the Czech
Republic; in the Falklands he takes the side of Argentina over the
United Kingdom; and now in the Middle East he takes the side of Iran
over the Sunni Arab monarchies and Israel.
This agreement will have bloody and brutal consequences.
This is the video I was looking for - and it will be followed by a serious post.
Some of you go back with me to the days of my Matzav mailing list (2000-04). In those days, I used to keep the radio on in the background while I posted. I got out of the habit during 2005-06, when I was in mourning for my mother and could not listen to music the entire year. (There's no such thing as a truly "all news" station here - they all take music breaks - so I didn't turn the radio on for the entire year). Today, I find it much harder to concentrate with background noise.
This song by Yehuda Policker was frequently on the radio during the Oslo war. It has a haunting chorus: "Erev tov Yerush' v'layla tov tikva, Mi haba bator u'mi ba'tor haba." (Good evening Jerusalem and good night hope, who is next in line and who is in the next line). As the suicide bombs went off throughout the country, this song was played on the radio night after night after night.
Let's go to the videotape.
Caroline Glick reports that another 'new Middle East' (the phrase was originally used in this country to ridicule Shimon Peres' idyllic vision of the Arabs lying down beside us without trying to murder us) is being shaped around us. Thanks to the Obama administration's ineptitude it's being dominated by Iran.
Iran’s mullahs win no matter how the revolts pan out. If weakened regimes maintain power by appeasing Iran’s allies in the opposition – as they are trying to do in Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Algeria, Bahrain, Oman and Yemen – then Iranian influence over the weakened regimes will grow substantially. And if Iran’s allies topple the regimes, then Iran’s influence will increase even more steeply.
Moreover, Iran’s preference for proxy wars and asymmetric battles is served well by the current instability. Iran’s proxies – from Hezbollah to al- Qaida to Hamas – operate best in weak states.
From Hezbollah’s operations in South Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s, to the Iranian-sponsored Iraqi insurgents in recent years and beyond, Iran has exploited weak central authorities to undermine pro-Western governments, weaken Israel and diminish US regional influence.
In the midst of Egypt’s revolutionary violence, Iran quickly deployed its Hamas proxies to Sinai.
Since Mubarak’s fall, Iran has worked intensively to expand its proxy forces’ capacity to operate freely in Sinai.
Recognition of Iran’s expanded power is fast altering the international community’s perception of the regional balance of forces. Russia’s announcement last Saturday that it will sell Syria the Yakhont supersonic anti-ship cruise missile was a testament to Iran’s rising regional power and the US’s loss of power.
Russia signed a deal to provide the missiles to Syria in 2007. But Moscow abstained from supplying them until now – just after Iran sailed its naval ships unmolested to Syria through the Suez Canal and signed a naval treaty with Syria effectively fusing the Iranian and Syrian navies.
So, too, Russia’s announcement that it sides with Iran’s ally Turkey in its support for reducing UN Security Council sanctions against Iran indicates that the US no longer has the regional posture necessary to contain Iran on the international stage.
Iran’s increased regional power and its concomitant expanded leverage in international oil markets will make it impossible for the US to win UN Security Council support for more stringent sanctions against Tehran. Obviously, UN Security Council-sanctioned military action against Iran’s nuclear installations is out of the question.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration has failed completely to understand what is happening.
Clinton told the House of Representatives and the Senate that Iran’s increased power means that the US should continue to arm and fund Iran’s allies and support the so-called democratic forces that are allied with Iran.
So it was that Clinton told the Senate that the Obama administration thinks it is essential to continue to supply the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese military with US arms. Clinton claimed that she couldn’t say what Hezbollah control over the Lebanese government meant regarding the future of US ties to Lebanon.
So, too, while Palestinian Authority leaders burn President Barack Obama in effigy and seek to form a unity government with Iran’s Hamas proxy, Clinton gave an impassioned defense of US funding for the PA to the House Foreign Relations Committee this week.
Clinton’s behavior bespeaks a stunning failure to understand the basic realities she and the State Department she leads are supposed to shape. Her lack of comprehension is matched only by her colleague Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ lack of shame and nerve. In a press conference this week, Gates claimed that Iran is weakened by the populist waves in the Arab world because Iran’s leaders are violently oppressing their political opponents.
In light of the Obama administration’s refusal to use US military force for even the most minor missions – like evacuating US citizens from Libya – without UN approval, it is apparent that the US will not use armed force against Iran for as long as Obama is in power.
And given the administration’s refusal to expend any effort to protect US interests and allies in the region lest the US be accused of acting like a superpower, it is clear that US allies like the Saudis will not be able to depend on America to defend the regime. This is the case despite the fact that its overthrow would threaten the US’s core regional interests.
Erev tov Yerush' v'layla tov tikava. Mi haba ba'tor u'mi ba'tor haba. Are we heading for a 'new Middle East' in which Israel is surrounded by enemies and unable to defend itself?
The New York Times' Ethan Bronner has got it right regarding sentiment here in Israel over the past week.
As the government evacuated the families of envoys from Egypt over the weekend, public affairs broadcasts and newspapers in Israel focused heavily on the unfolding events there. Most of the predictions were dire. Two of three newspapers with the largest circulations, Yediot Aharonot and Maariv, had identical front page headlines: “A New Middle East.”
It was an ironic reference to the phrase used frequently in the 1990s by President Shimon Peres and other advocates of coexistence who argued that if Israel made peace with its neighbors, a more prosperous and enlightened region would bloom. Events of the past five years — the takeover of Gaza by Hamas, the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran’s influence in Iraq and the shift by Turkey toward Iran and Syria — have turned many Israelis rightward, fearing that the more time passes the more the region is against them.
Israelis worry that Jordan is in a precarious state and a successful overthrow in Egypt could spread there. And if the Muslim Brotherhood were to gain power in Egypt that would likely mean not only a stronger Islamist force in Gaza but also in the West Bank, currently run by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, as well as in Jordan, meaning Israel would feel surrounded in a way it has not in decades.
If Egypt also turned unfriendly that would likely stop in its tracks any further Israeli talk of peace negotiations with the Palestinians, officials and analysts said. A peace treaty with the West Bank would involve yielding territory and military control to a relatively weak Palestinian Authority. Trading land for peace with autocrats like Mr. Mubarak, some analysts say, is not a sound basis for enduring treaties.
There has long been concern that popular sentiment in Egypt is anti-Israel. Eli Shaked, a former Israeli ambassador to Cairo wrote in Yediot Aharonot newspaper, “The only people in Egypt who are committed to peace are the people in Mubarak’s inner circle and if the next president is not one of them, we are going to be in trouble.”
Bronner is only hinting at a much wider problem. What's true of Egypt is also true of Jordan and of the 'Palestinian Authority.' To the extent that we have peace with any of them, that peace is with the elites, with the leadership, and not with the people. Worse, the elites have never been willing to go to bat to tell their people the truth - that Israel is here to stay. Instead, they - especially the 'Palestinian Authority' - continue to encourage with a wink and a nudge the notion that the Jewish presence in this region is temporary and will eventually be vitiated.
It was a mistake not to insist on re-education of the Egyptian population as part of the Camp David accords. And when negotiators woke up to that fact with the 'road map' in 2003, the 'Palestinians' ignored the responsibility, and continued to allow and encourage their media to incite against the Jews.
Unless and until there is a fundamental change in the way in which Muslim Arabs (and Persians) think, there is no place for 'peace negotiations' here. Israel should announce that kowtowing to the West at the expense of risking our lives is over. If that means withdrawing from the UN, so be it.
When I travel to Boston, I often see Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby at synagogue. This trip, I didn't make it to that synagogue. Too bad. I would have loved to get an advance copy of this column (although to tell you the truth, I don't think he even knows who I am).
Hat Tip: NY Nana
How could Israel have been so complacent? What could have accounted for such lethargy in the face of a deadly menace that was growing more dangerous by the day?
The answer, says the Winograd Commission, is that too many of "the political and military elites in Israel have reached the conclusion that Israel is beyond the era of wars." Unlike their forbears, who understood that the Jewish state would never have peace until its enemies decided to lay down their arms, today's Israeli leadership imagines that it can achieve peace by means of restraint and retreat.
"Since Israel did not intend to initiate a war," the report concludes, senior officials decided that Israel "did not need to be prepared for 'real' war." And that being the case, "there was also no urgent need to update in a systematic and sophisticated way Israel's overall security strategy and to consider how to mobilize . . . all its resources -- political, economic, social, military, spiritual, cultural, and scientific -- to address the totality of the challenges it faces."
Fed up with fighting, aching to live normally, Israelis lulled themselves into a stupor. They shook hands with Yasser Arafat and ran away from Lebanon and expelled the Jews from Gaza. They blamed themselves for their enemies' hatred and turned the other cheek to suicide bombings and Kassam rocket attacks. They tried to be Athens, one Israeli commentator wrote last year. But to survive in the Middle East, even Athens must sometimes act like Sparta.
"We are tired of fighting," Olmert moaned in a 2005 speech. "We are tired of defeating our enemies." But those who grow tired of defeating their enemies generally end up being defeated by them.
As America's beleaguered ally searches for new leadership, one voice worth heeding is that of Hebrew University game theorist and Nobel laureate Robert Aumann.
"We are like a mountain climber who gets caught in a snowstorm," Aumann said at this year's Herzliya Conference in January. " If he falls asleep, he will freeze to death. We are in terminal danger because we are tired. I will allow myself to say a few unpopular, unfashionable words: Our panicked lunging for peace is working against us. It brings us farther away from peace, and endangers our very existence.
Read the whole thing. I am proud to say that if you go here, you will see that I emphasized the same points about Israel being too complacent.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
