Netanyahu thanks Congress for slapping Obama in the face
Shavua tov everyone.
On Friday afternoon, just before the Sabbath started, Prime Minister Netanyahu released a video thanking Congress for slapping President Obama in the face. No, Obama's name isn't mentioned, but it's pretty obvious. He thanked Congress for reflecting the will of the American people.
Congress to freeze State Department funding until embassy moves to Jerusalem
In yet another slap in the face to President Hussein Obama, the Washington Free Beacon reports that the Republican-controlled Congress is freezing State Department funding until the US Embassy to Israel moves to Jerusalem.
A delegation of Republican senators is moving forward with an effort to
freeze some funding to the State Department until the U.S. embassy in
Israel is formally moved to Jerusalem, according to new legislation.
...
The effort is being spearheaded by Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Marco
Rubio (R., Fla.), and Dean Heller (R., Nev.), all of whom support
efforts by the incoming Trump administration to move the U.S. embassy to
Jerusalem after years of debate.
“Jerusalem is the eternal and undivided capital of Israel,” Cruz said
in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s vendetta
against the Jewish state has been so vicious that to even utter this
simple truth—let alone the reality that Jerusalem is the appropriate
venue for the American embassy in Israel—is shocking in some circles.”
“But it is finally time to cut through the double-speak and broken
promises and do what Congress said we should do in 1995: formally move
our embassy to the capital of our great ally Israel,” Cruz said.
The legislation orders the White House to identify Jerusalem as
Israel’s capital, which the Obama administration has refused to do. The
bill will freeze a significant portion of the State Department’s funding
until it completes the relocation.
In the past, the Obama White House has been caught scrubbing captions
on official photographs that labeled Jerusalem as part of Israel. The
administration also was entangled in a Supreme Court case when it
refused to permit an American family to list its child’s birthplace as
“Jerusalem, Israel.”
Heller said the legislation could help repair America’s relationship
with Israel, which has become strained under the Obama administration.
Mark January 20 on your calendars. That's the date US-Israel relations make a significant change for the better.
Just received this by email. It came out a short while ago.
Joint Statement from Jason
Dov Greenblatt and David Friedman, Co-Chairmen of the Israel Advisory Committee
to Donald J. Trump
It has been an exhilarating
election cycle. Approximately seven months ago, we were blessed to have been
tapped by Donald J. Trump to be his top advisors with respect to the State of
Israel. We have been fortunate to work with a talented team of people and have
put together the below positions. Each of these positions have been discussed
with Mr. Trump and the Trump campaign, and most have been stated, in one
form or another, by Mr. Trump in various interviews or speeches given by him or
on his social media accounts. For those of you who are true friends of the
State of Israel, and for those of you who believe that the State of Israel and
the United States of America have an unbreakable friendship, we urge you to
read the below. We would like to express our gratitude to those individuals who
have helped us over the past few months – we truly appreciate your efforts,
friendship and guidance. We would also like to express our gratitude to our
friend, a great friend of the State of Israel, Donald J. Trump, who gave us the
tremendous opportunity to serve in this capacity. May God bless the United
States of America and the State of Israel.
·The unbreakable bond between the
United States and Israel is based upon shared values of democracy, freedom of
speech, respect for minorities, cherishing life, and the opportunity for all
citizens to pursue their dreams.
·Israel is the state of the Jewish
people, who have lived in that land for 3,500 years. The State of Israel was
founded with courage and determination by great men and women against enormous
odds and is an inspiration to people everywhere who value freedom and human
dignity.
·Israel is a staunch ally of the U.S.
and a key partner in the global war against Islamic jihadism. Military
cooperation and coordination between Israel and the U.S. must continue to grow.
·The American people value our close
friendship and alliance with Israel -- culturally, religiously, and
politically. While other nations have required U.S.
troops to defend them, Israelis have always defended their own country by
themselves and only ask for military equipment assistance and
diplomatic support to do so. The U.S. does not need to nation-build
in Israel or send troops to defend Israel.
·The Memorandum of
Understanding signed by the American and Israeli Governments is a good first
step, but there is much more to be done. A Trump Administration will ensure
that Israel receives maximum military, strategic and
tactical cooperation from the United States, and the MOU will not limit
the support that we give. Further, Congress will not be limited to give
support greater than that provided by the MOU if it chooses to do so. Israel
and the United States benefit tremendously from what each country brings
to the table – the relationship is a two way street.
·The U.S. should veto any United
Nations votes that unfairly single out Israel and will work in international
institutions and forums, including in our relations with the European Union, to
oppose efforts to delegitimize Israel, impose discriminatory double standards
against Israel, or to impose special labeling requirements on Israeli products
or boycotts on Israeli goods.
·The U.S. should cut off funds for the
UN Human Rights Council, a body dominated by countries presently run by
dictatorships that seems solely devoted to slandering the Jewish State. UNESCO’s
attempt to disconnect the State of Israel from Jerusalem is a one-sided attempt
to ignore Israel’s 3,000-year bond to its capital city, and is further evidence
of the enormous anti-Israel bias of the United Nations.
·The U.S. should view the effort to boycott,
divest from, and sanction (BDS) Israel as inherently anti-Semitic and take
strong measures, both diplomatic and legislative, to thwart actions that are
intended to limit commercial relations with Israel, or persons or entities
doing business in Israeli areas, in a discriminatory manner. The BDS movement
is just another attempt by the Palestinians to avoid having to commit to a
peaceful co-existence with Israel. The false notion that Israel is an occupier
should be rejected.
·The Trump administration will ask the
Justice Department to investigate coordinated attempts on college campuses to
intimidate students who support Israel.
·A two-state solution between Israel
and the Palestinians appears impossible as long as the Palestinians are
unwilling to renounce violence against Israel or recognize Israel’s right to
exist as a Jewish state. Additionally, the Palestinians are divided between PA
rule in the West Bank and Hamas rule in Gaza so there is not a united
Palestinian people who could control a second state. Hamas is a US-designated
terrorist organization that actively seeks Israel’s destruction. We will seek
to assist the Israelis and the Palestinians in reaching a comprehensive and
lasting peace, to be freely and fairly negotiated between those living in the
region.
·The Palestinian leadership, including
the PA, has undermined any chance for peace with Israel by raising generations
of Palestinian children on an educational program of hatred of Israel and Jews.
The larger Palestinian society is regularly taught such hatred on Palestinian
television, in the Palestinian press, in entertainment media, and in political
and religious communications. The two major Palestinian political parties –
Hamas and Fatah – regularly promote anti-Semitism and jihad.
·The U.S. cannot support the creation
of a new state where terrorism is financially incentivized, terrorists are
celebrated by political parties and government institutions, and the corrupt
diversion of foreign aid is rampant. The U.S. should not support the creation
of a state that forbids the presence of Christian or Jewish citizens, or that
discriminates against people on the basis of religion.
·The U.S. should support direct
negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians without preconditions, and
will oppose all Palestinian, European and other efforts to bypass direct
negotiations between parties in favor of an imposed settlement. Any solutions
imposed on Israel by outside parties including by the United Nations Security
Council, should be opposed. We support Israel’s right and obligation to
defend itself against terror attacks upon its people and against alternative
forms of warfare being waged upon it legally, economically, culturally, and
otherwise.
·Israel’s maintenance of defensible
borders that preserve peace and promote stability in the region is a necessity.
Pressure should not be put on Israel to withdraw to borders that make attacks
and conflict more likely.
·The U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as
the eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish state and Mr. Trump’s
Administration will move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
·Despite the Iran Nuclear deal in
2015, the U.S. State Department recently designated Iran, yet again, as the
leading state sponsor of terrorism – putting the Middle East particularly, but
the whole world at risk by financing, arming, and training terrorist groups
operating around the world including Hamas, Hezbollah, and forces loyal to
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. must counteract Iran’s ongoing
violations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran’s quest for
nuclear weapons and their noncompliance with past and present sanctions, as well
as the agreements they signed, and implement tough, new sanctions when needed
to protect the world and Iran’s neighbors from its continuing nuclear and
non-nuclear threats.
A few observations:
1. It would be interesting to hear with what Hillary Clinton disagrees in this statement, if anything. It's a shame that no one who can will ask her, and no public statements are likely in the next week.
2. I would love to hear this directly from Donald Trump, rather than from his advisers. He should at least release this a statement saying he agrees with everything that is here.
3. To me, these are mainstream positions, certainly in Israel and probably among Republicans in the US as well. It would behoove all of us to carry these as talking points and to see who agrees with them and who does not.
Priorities! State Department ignores Syria, blasts Israel for giving Jews in Samaria a place to live
The self-proclaimed 'most pro-Israel administration evah' has blasted the Government of Israel for attempting to resettle the Jews of Amona, a neighborhood in Ofra (Samaria), in an alternate location in Samaria.
The statement, signed by Mark Toner, deputy spokesman for the State Department, drew an unusual linkage between the signing of the defense aid agreement with Israel and criticism of settlement building.
Toner stressed that the U.S. views advancement of the plan as a violation of a commitment by Netanyahu's government not to establish any new settlements in the West Bank.
The White House later further escalated the criticism, as Josh Ernest said that the decision constitutes a violation of a commitment undertaken by the Israeli government to the U.S. administration, adding that this isn't how friends behave.
"We had public assurances from the Israeli government that contradict this new announcement – so when you talk about how friends treat each other – this is also a source of concern. There is a lot of disappointment and great concern here at the White House," he said.
The criticism comes against the backdrop of the Civil Administration Planning Commission's decision last Wednesday to approve a plan for the construction of 98 housing units in the new settlement to be established next to the Shvut Rachel settlement.
According to the plan, it will be possible to build up to 300 housing units and an industrial zone. The NRG web site and Channel 2 were the first to publish the decision. The new settlement, which settlers say is only a neighborhood of the existing settlement of Shvut Rachel, can provide housing for residents of the illegal outposts of Amona, who are expected to be evicted by the end of December.
A senior U.S. official said that the White House boiled with anger at the advancement of the plan and even more at the timing of the decision – just a week after the signing of the military aid agreement by which the U.S. will give Israel $38 billion for a decade, and the day of the death of former president Shimon Peres, whose funeral was attended by President Barack Obama.
A large part of American anger was due to the administration seeing the step as a violation of a commitment Netanyahu gave Obama in 2009 that Israel would not build any new settlements. In his speech at Bar-Ilan that year, Netanyahu said he agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state and added: "The territorial issues will be discussed in a permanent agreement. Till then we have no intention to build new settlements or set aside land for new settlements."
And in the seven years since the Bar Ilan speech, there have effectively been NO negotiations. At some point, life has to move on.
Ironically, the best thing that could happen for the 'peace process' would be for the 'Palestinians' to actually feel they are losing something by not coming to the table. Nothing else has even a remote chance of bringing them to the table.
The statement was unusual both in its length of more than 300 words, and in content, using strong language to express U.S. objections to advancement of the plan.
"We strongly condemn the Israeli government's recent decision to advance a plan that would create a significant new settlement deep in the West Bank, State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said.
Still waiting to hear Obama 'strongly condemn' Assad, let alone do something about him. But priorities man, priorities.
And then the State Department dug deeper.
One of the statement's clauses referred to the defense aid agreement. Its wording was most extraordinary, for through the years the U.S. has avoided creating any linkage between defense aid to Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the settlement construction issue.
"It is deeply troubling, in the wake of Israel and the U.S. concluding an unprecedented agreement on military assistance designed to further strengthen Israel's security, that Israel would take a decision so contrary to its long term security interest in a peaceful resolution of its conflict with the Palestinians," Toner added.
The State Department's statement also referred to the timing of the decision – the day of former President Shimon Peres' death, saying:
"Furthermore, it is disheartening that while Israel and the world mourned the passing of President Shimon Peres, and leaders from the U.S. and other nations prepared to honor one of the great champions of peace, plans were advanced that would seriously undermine the prospects for the two state solution that he so passionately supported."
So we owe it to Peres' 'legacy' to create his virtual state on an island and jump into the sea? How absurd!
If you were thinking of celebrating the new United States - Israel Memorandum of Understanding signed by Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama this week, Eli Lake has a bunch of reasons why you shouldn't.
After all of this bad blood, in the last months of his
administration, Obama has decided to sign an agreement with Israel that
guarantees $3.8 billion per year between 2018 and 2028. On paper it
seems generous. As Susan Rice, Obama's national security adviser, said
Wednesday, this is the "single largest pledge of military assistance --
to any country -- in American history."
The
fine print tells a different story. The key word in Rice's statement is
"pledge." Congress is the body that appropriates the annual aid budget.
When Obama is long gone, it will be Congress that doles out the money
for Israel to spend on U.S. military equipment. So one aspect of the aid
deal should raise eyebrows: terms saying that Israel will stop making
its case directly to Congress for military aid.
Morris Amitay, a
former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, or Aipac, told me he had never before heard of a president
asking a sovereign country, as part of an aid package negotiation, not
to lobby Congress.
At first Netanyahu didn't want to give up
Israel's ability to ask Congress for more funding. But he relented. A
secret annex to the memorandum signed Wednesday requires Israel to forgo
any funding Congress would want to give it that exceeds what was in the
aid agreement that expires in 2018.
It's unclear how restrictive
the lobbying restriction will actually be. Israel doesn't lobby Congress
much. Far more pro-Israel lobbying is done by Aipac, which comprises
U.S. citizens. Could an agreement between Israel and the U.S. limit the
rights of Americans to petition Congress? When I put this question to
Aipac's spokesman, Marshall Wittman, he told me: "The agreement, of
course, is only between the two governments. When the two governments
reach an agreement on an issue, we give that factor great weight." For
the time being, Aipac says it will lobby Congress to enact the terms of
the new 10-year aid agreement signed on Wednesday.
Obama's 11th-hour
aid deal is less than it seems, not only because the White House cannot
appropriate and because the lobbying restriction is off target, but
also because Obama's successors may not honor his pledge. Obama himself
discarded an agreement with Israel's leaders that was made by George W.
Bush and supported by Congress, to accept the legitimacy of some
settlements in and around Jerusalem. (That agreement was made as part of
negotiations to get Israel to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza.)
The
White House also got its way on another key issue known as the
"off-shore procurement" carve out, whereby Israel is allowed to spend
around 26 percent of the U.S. aid on its own defense industry. In the new aid deal, Israel will spend all of the U.S. subsidy on U.S. defense equipment by 2024.
In
this sense the U.S. aid to Israel is a subsidy to American defense
companies. The U.S. also retains the leverage that comes from
subsidizing around 20 percent of a sovereign nation's defense budget.
Of
course, Israel doesn't even need the money. When the U.S. began giving
Israel serious military assistance in the 1960s, the country's planned
economy was minuscule. In the 1970s it faced a very real boycott, backed
by wealthy nations like Saudi Arabia (as opposed to an inconsequential
boycott backed by U.S. and European college professors). Back then, the
Jewish State really needed as much help as it could get.
Today,
Israel's economy is thriving. In the last 10 years, the country's gross
domestic product has nearly doubled, to $230 billion. Israel has
discovered great deposits of natural gas. Its lawmakers in recent years
have discussed starting a sovereign wealth fund. Israel is a key partner
with the U.S. arms industry.
I've heard it claimed that Netanyahu agreed to this because he 'fears' that if elected President, Donald Trump will force Israel to repay aid money. If that were true, as Lake points out, this deal would not stop Trump from doing that.
I suspect that the quid pro quo is much more immediate and relates to the Obama administration's behavior at the United Nations over its last four months in office.
Isn't it amazing that the President who ran on a platform of ridding the world of nuclear weapons has facilitated Iran obtaining one a few years down the road and has likely set off the largest arms race in human history?
Not that I'm complaining about receiving all that money, but it just should not have been necessary.
PS I'm in Boston again, where the local time is 1:32 pm.
Republican Presidential candidate Marco Rubio has promised a 'reset' of US-Israel relations if he is elected President of the United States.
"I believe my election or the election of someone like me, in and by
itself will help reset that relationship in the eyes of the world,”
Rubio said, the Jewish Insider's Jacob Kornbluh reported.
According to the Florida senator, the Obama administration
deliberately created distance between the U.S. and Israel in an effort
to improve the U.S. standing and its perception in the Muslim world.
"It's been a disaster," he added.
The Republican candidate said the Obama administration damaged the relationship with Israel by briefly suspending military sales during the last Gaza war,
and by making an implied threat that the U.S. won't use its veto power
in the UN Security Council against a possible resolution recognizing a
Palestinian state.
Rubio also slammed Obama for treating Iran's supreme leader with
"more respect" than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, due to Israel's
opposition to the Iran nuclear deal.
'Most pro-Israel President evah' orders Secretary of State, UN Ambassador to skip Israeli PM's UN speech
President Hussein Obama, the self-proclaimed 'most pro-Israel President evah,' ordered his Secretary of State John Kerry and his Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power to skip Prime Minister Netanyahu's address to the UN General Assembly on Thursday (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
“Ambassador Power and Secretary Kerry
were unable to attend Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech before
the General Assembly because they were called into a meeting with
President Obama, which they participated in via video teleconference,” a
State Department Official told Breitbart News.
Although they were both in New York
for the United Nations General Assembly meetings, the two high-ranking
U.S. officials were notably absent for the entirety of the Israeli Prime
Minister’s speech.
“The United States was represented at
the speech by Ambassador David Pressman, Alternate Representative of
the United States to the United Nations for Special Political Affairs,
Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro, and Ambassador Richard Erdman,
Alternate Representative to the UN General Assembly,” the official
added.
AIPAC tries to blame Netanyahu for Iran deal's passage
With President Hussein Obama being credited with killing the so-called 'Israel lobby,' AIPAC, its most visible component, is blaming Prime Minister Netanyahu for the apparent passage of the President's sellout to a nuclear-armed Iran.
“Netanyahu’s speech in Congress made the Iranian issue a partisan one,”
the AIPAC official told Israel’s Walla news. “As soon as he insisted on
going ahead with this move, which was perceived as a Republican maneuver
against the president, we lost a significant part of the Democratic
party, without which it was impossible to block the agreement,” said the
official, who asked not to be named.
AIPAC is disavowing the anonymous official.
AIPAC’s spokesman Marshall Wittmann dissociated the organization from
the remarks. “The comments by the purported ‘AIPAC official’ to Walla
News about the prime minister do not represent or reflect the views of
our organization and were not authorized by us,” he told The Times of
Israel. Ahead of Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, he also noted, AIPAC
made plain it firmly supported the prime minister’s address. “AIPAC
welcomes the prime minister’s speech to Congress and we believe that
this is a very important address,” Wittmann said at the time.
“We have been actively encouraging senators and representatives to
attend and we have received an overwhelmingly positive response from
both sides of the aisle.”
It's no secret that AIPAC opposed the speech and that a number of Democratic members of Congress (the Times of Israel puts it at 50) did not show up for Netanyahu's speech. But that's not what made this a partisan issue. President Hussein Obama railroads the Democrats in Congress as if they were part of a parliamentary coalition voting in no-confidence votes, and he has made Netanyahu and Israel a target since the day he took office. It's Obama who has turned the US-Israel relationship into a partisan one, not Netanyahu.
Netanyahu can also be credited for the fact that two thirds of the American people oppose the sellout to a nuclear-armed Iran, regardless of what their Leftist dominated media is telling them. It will be interesting to see whether that opposition translates into trouble at the polls for the Democrats in 2016. Here's Elliott Abrams.
Netanyahu has always seen the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons program as existential for Israel. In that case, how could he not
try to change the political calculus in the United States? Should he
have pulled his punches, said less, made this a smaller issue—not tried,
that is, to win the argument?
Actually, Netanyahu has won the argument:
most Americans are highly skeptical of the Iran deal and don’t like it,
and it will be disapproved in both houses of Congress. In the last
months opinion has shifted against the deal, and he can take some credit
for that. But his critics don’t blame him for losing, they blame him
for trying--damaging Israel’s relations with the United States and its
own credibility.
As to relations with the United States, there are
no polls suggesting any damage at all. Americans don’t appear to blame
an Israeli prime minister who argues about his country’s security.
Israeli political enemies of Netanyahu talk all the time about this
being the worst crisis ever in U.S.-Israel relations, which is nonsense.
They appear to have forgotten Suez in 1956, or the argument over Saudi
AWACS in 1981, or the denial of loan guarantees in 1992, for example.
So what are we talking about here? We are talking about damaging relations with the Obama administration.
To that argument there are two answers. First, it’s
a diminishing problem, because we are already in the election season.
At worst, Netanyahu risked another year of bad relations with Obama to
fight for his country’s security. Hard to call that a bad decision.
Second, it is also hard to believe that relations with Obama will
actually be worsened—only because they are already so bad. The personal
chemistry between the two men is awful, and has been from 2009. That
won’t change. And Obama’s policies in the Middle East and toward Israel—explained in full in Michael Oren’s memoir of his years as Israel’s ambassador in Washington during the Obama first term, Ally—have been harmful to Israel from day one, and those policies won’t change either.
Moreover, AIPAC bet all its cards on the Corker-Cardin bill which reversed the treaty process by requiring that only 34 Senators vote in favor of the sellout rather than 67. Yes, I know, the Supreme Court would not get involved anyway if Obama insisted it's not a treaty. But that argument would have lacked credibility if it were not for the Senate affirming that to be the case. Abrams also sees a possible redemption of AIPAC in the future.
Third, what AIPAC has lost or gained in reputation cannot yet be judged.
The campaign against Obama’s Iran deal has substantially delegitimized
the deal. If the next president abandons the Iran agreement, AIPAC can
take a good deal of credit. If the United States acts in the next year
or two to tighten the agreement with new demands on Iran, or increases
sanctions on Iran, AIPAC can take a good deal of credit. If members of
Congress who should have known better but voted with Obama are defeated
in the 2016 elections, AIPAC will very likely be given a good deal of
credit. The argument that a losing fight undermines and weakens AIPAC
was heard way back in 1981 when the organization opposed selling those
AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia. It lost that fight and the planes were
sold—but U.S.-Israel relations prospered and AIPAC grew stronger.
Well, yeah. But unless the next President carries an R as his party affiliation, it doesn't appear likely that the deal will be abandoned.
In any event, blaming Netanyahu for the deal's passage is wrong-headed. Netanyahu had no choice but to behave as he did. Those who are blaming him are from the opposition parties and they are trying to unseat him. Most Israelis - including the opposition parties - agree that the deal is a bad deal.
“Israel was sold out by Kerry and Obama,” Trump said at an Iowa campaign event Saturday. “You cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. You can’t have it. When they march down the street saying ‘Death to Israel. Death to the United States.’ You can’t let that happen.”
Trump seemed to imply he would take a tougher stance on Iran, pointing to himself and saying, “Believe me, it will not happen here.”
Trump is a vocal supporter of Israel, and a harsh critic of President Obama’s policy toward Israel.
“I have many Jewish friends that support Obama and I say, ‘Why?’ and they can’t explain why. They support him, they give him money, they give him campaign contributions,” Trump told radio host Michael Savage in February. “This is the worst enemy of Israel.”
Obama really is the worst enemy of Israel. But no one wants to admit it.
In an effort to defend Prime Minister Netanyahu from charges of destroying the US-Israel alliance due to his 'prickly' relationship with President Obama, Jonathan Tobin almost turns relations between the US and Israel and the moderate Arab states, on the one hand, and the US and Iran, on the other hand, into a zero sum game.
But the U.S.-Israel crackup isn’t a tabloid romance gone sour. The differences between the two countries are rooted in the administration’s reckless pursuit of an entente with Iran at the cost of its friendships with both Israel and moderate Arab states. That pursuit began in Obama’s first months in office, and nothing Netanyahu could have done or said would have deterred the president from this course of action. His success was achieved by a series of American concessions on key nuclear issues and not by pique about Israel’s stands on the peace process with the Palestinians or perceived rudeness on the part of Netanyahu.
Despite the attempt to portray Netanyahu’s interventions in the debate about Iran as a partisan move or an insult to Obama, keeping silent would not have advanced Israel’s interests or made more U.S. surrenders to Iran less likely. At this point, Israel has no choice but to remind U.S. lawmakers of the terrible blow to American credibility and regional stability from the Iran deal. It is the White House that has turned the Iranian nuclear threat — which was once the subject of a bipartisan consensus — into a choice between loyalty to the Democratic Party and its leader and friendship for Israel.
It is almost a given that the next president — no matter who he or she might turn out to be — will be friendlier to Israel than Obama. But the president’s legacy may not only be the strengthening of a terror state in Tehran. It has also chipped away at the U.S.-Israel alliance in a way that will make it that much harder to maintain the across-the-board pro-Israel consensus in Congress in the coming years. Given the growing dangers that the deal poses to Israel this is something that should have both Republicans and Democrats deeply worried.
Coming into office, Obama had two independent foreign policy goals in the Middle East: To weaken or destroy the United States' relations with what he sees as 'neo-colonialist' Israel, and to bring Iran back into the fold of nations. Each goal has been pursued independently. The goal of weakening the alliance with Israel has been pursued through the Obama administration changing the terms of the 'peace process' as much as it has been played by making Iran a strong enough power to check Israel. The goal of bringing Iran back into the fold of nations has been pursued through the nuclear sellout. There is nothing Netanyahu or any other Israeli leader could have done to stop Obama on either front.
The moderate Arab states are collateral damage. For different reasons than Israel, they oppose a nuclear Iran and they oppose (although they cannot say so), the creation of a 'Palestinian' terror state in the Middle East. The fact that the two goals coincide on many levels doesn't mean that an alliance with Israel was traded for one with Iran. Each goal was pursued separately.
And none of this has anything to do with Obama's personal relationship with Netanyahu. Shimon Peres could have been Prime Minister and Moshe Dayan could have been Foreign or Defense Minister and they still would have clashed with Obama. Like the 'Palestinians,' Obama sees all of Israel as 'occupied,' and not just the territories liberated in 1967.
[N]othing Obama has done to damage Israel’s standing in Congress could
compare to getting Chuck Schumer — the supposed shomer (guardian, in
Hebrew) of Israel — to ensure the survival of a nuclear deal that
rearranges America’s Mideast alliances by elevating Tehran at the
expense of the Israelis, the Saudis, the Jordanians and the Egyptians,
among others.
And that’s why crowds in Times Square Wednesday night chanted “Where is Chuck Schumer?”
As Schumer continues to avoid answering questions about his stance on
the nuke deal, his constituents are wondering how far he’s willing to
go to become the Democrats’ next Senate leader.
Would Schumer the shomer throw America’s allies under the bus and
allow Obama to drive a wedge between Washington and Jerusalem? If
Schumer won’t answer that question directly, his handling of the Iran
deal will.
The prophetic video that predicted what Obama would do to Israel
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
Some of uspredicted in 2008 what Obama would do to Israel, but by 2012 everyone should have got it. An awful lot of people didn't get it. 78% of American Jews voted for Obama a second time six weeks after this video came out.
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.
Hillary Clinton is privately signaling to wealthy Jewish donors that — no matter the result of the Iranian nuclear negotiations — she will be a better friend to Israel than President Barack Obama.
But,
even as donors increasingly push Clinton on the subject in private,
they have emerged with sometimes widely varying interpretations about
whether she would support a prospective deal, according to interviews
with more than 10 influential donors and fundraising operatives.
Clinton’s private responses in some ways resemble a foreign
policy Rorschach test; donors who see a deal as important to world peace
have come away thinking that Clinton shares their perspective, but so,
too, do donors who oppose any prospective agreement as compromising
Israeli security.
Part of the problem is that Clinton doesn't really think Obama is so bad for Israel.
And, at a Manhattan fundraiser last week featuring a largely Jewish
group of donors, Clinton defended Obama against charges he had weakened
the U.S.-Israel relationship, asserting that such criticism stemmed from
a “perception” problem, according to a donor who was present. But she
also suggested that if she were elected president she could correct that
problem and bring the two nations closer.
“Diplomacy is all
about personal relationships, and I’ve got my own relationships,” she
said, referencing her two-decade association with Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, an ardent opponent of the Iran deal and,
occasionally, of Obama. Clinton even cited her rapport with former
Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, who last week published a
book that was brutally critical of the Obama administration and was
timed for release to try to stymie the Iran deal. “I know Michael well, but I haven’t read the book,” she said.
At
a fundraiser last month at the Long Island home of Democratic donor Jay
Jacobs, Clinton was asked by an Orthodox rabbi about threats to
Israel’s security. “She did stress in no uncertain terms her full and
fervent support of the state of Israel and the defense of the state of
Israel,” recalled Jacobs. “And the people in the audience who heard it
seemed to be comfortable with her answer.”
Likewise, donors at a
different New York fundraiser seemed to fully accept her answer to a
slightly different question about the U.S. interest in the deal, said
billionaire hedge fund manager Marc Lasry, a leading Clinton donor. “She
said ‘I’m going to do what’s in the best interest of the U.S.,’ and
that was the end of it,” Lasry said.
Read the whole thing. Being better for Israel than Obama doesn't mean very much.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States and current MK Michael Oren (Kulanu) criticizes Prime Minister Netanyahu's handling of his relationship with President Hussein Obama, and then rips Obama for abandoning Israel. More after the lengthy excerpt (someone was kind enough to send me the full article by email).
[M]any of Israel’s bungles were not committed
by Mr. Netanyahu personally. In both episodes with Mr. Biden, for example, the
announcements were issued by midlevel officials who also caught the prime
minister off-guard. Nevertheless, he personally apologized to the vice
president.
Mr. Netanyahu’s only premeditated misstep was
his speech to Congress, which I recommended against. Even that decision, though,
came in reaction to a calculated mistake by President Obama. From the moment he
entered office, Mr. Obama promoted an agenda of championing the Palestinian
cause and achieving a nuclear accord with Iran. Such policies would have put him
at odds with any Israeli leader. But Mr. Obama posed an even more fundamental
challenge by abandoning the two core principles of Israel’s alliance with
America.
The first principle was “no daylight.” The U.S.
and Israel always could disagree but never openly. Doing so would encourage
common enemies and render Israel vulnerable. Contrary to many of his detractors,
Mr. Obama was never anti-Israel and, to his credit, he significantly
strengthened security cooperation with the Jewish state. He rushed to help
Israel in 2011 when the Carmel forest was devastated by fire. And yet,
immediately after his first inauguration, Mr. Obama put daylight between Israel
and America.
“When there is no daylight,” the president told
American Jewish leaders in 2009, “Israel just sits on the sidelines and that
erodes our credibility with the Arabs.” The explanation ignored Israel’s 2005
withdrawal from Gaza and its two previous offers of Palestinian statehood in
Gaza, almost the entire West Bank and half of Jerusalem—both offers rejected by
the Palestinians.
Mr. Obama also voided President George W. Bush’s
commitment to include the major settlement blocs and Jewish Jerusalem within
Israel’s borders in any peace agreement. Instead, he insisted on a total freeze
of Israeli construction in those areas—“not a single brick,” I later heard he
ordered Mr. Netanyahu—while making no substantive demands of the
Palestinians. Consequently, Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas boycotted negotiations, reconciled with Hamas and sought statehood in the
U.N.—all in violation of his commitments to the U.S.—but he never paid
a price. By contrast, the White House routinely condemned Mr. Netanyahu for
building in areas that even Palestinian negotiators had agreed would remain part
of Israel.
The other core principle was “no surprises.”
President Obama discarded it in his first meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, in May
2009, by abruptly demanding a settlement freeze and Israeli acceptance of the
two-state solution. The following month the president traveled to the Middle
East, pointedly skipping Israel and addressing the Muslim world from Cairo.
Israeli leaders typically received advance
copies of major American policy statements on the Middle East and could submit
their comments. But Mr. Obama delivered his Cairo speech, with its unprecedented
support for the Palestinians and its recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear
power, without consulting Israel.
Similarly, in May 2011, the president altered 40
years of U.S. policy by endorsing the 1967 lines with land swaps—formerly the
Palestinian position—as the basis for peace-making. If Mr. Netanyahu appeared to
lecture the president the following day, it was because he had been assured by
the White House, through me, that no such change would happen.
Israel was also stunned to learn that Mr. Obama
offered to sponsor a U.N. Security Council investigation of the settlements and
to back Egyptian and Turkish efforts to force Israel to reveal its alleged
nuclear capabilities. Mr. Netanyahu eventually agreed to a 10-month moratorium
on settlement construction—the first such moratorium since 1967—and backed the
creation of a Palestinian state. He was taken aback, however, when he received
little credit for these concessions from Mr. Obama, who more than once publicly
snubbed him.
The abandonment of the “no daylight” and “no
surprises” principles climaxed over the Iranian nuclear program. Throughout my
years in Washington, I participated in intimate and frank discussions with U.S.
officials on the Iranian program. But parallel to the talks came administration
statements and leaks—for example, each time Israeli warplanes reportedly struck
Hezbollah-bound arms convoys in Syria—intended to deter Israel from striking
Iran pre-emptively.
Finally, in 2014, Israel discovered that its
primary ally had for months been secretly negotiating with its deadliest enemy.
The talks resulted in an interim agreement that the great majority of Israelis
considered a “bad deal” with an irrational, genocidal regime. Mr. Obama, though,
insisted that Iran was a rational and potentially “very successful regional
power.”
The daylight between Israel and the U.S. could
not have been more blinding. And for Israelis who repeatedly heard the president
pledge that he “had their backs” and “was not bluffing” about the military
option, only to watch him tell an Israeli interviewer that “a military solution
cannot fix” the Iranian nuclear threat, the astonishment could not have been
greater.
Oren doesn't go far enough. His claim that Obama was 'never anti-Israel' doesn't square with the facts that we knew long before Obama was elected President. The fact that the one example Oren gives of 'significantly strengthened security cooperation' under Obama relates to a natural disaster and not to a military action is telling.
Oren seems to be placing the burden of restoring the US-Israel relationship to what it was on both the US and Israel. But clearly, one party here (the US in the person of the Obama administration) initiated the hostilities. The actions that Obama took immediately on taking office - the introduction of 'daylight' between the US and Israel, the Cairo speech, the Buchenwald visit in which he adopted the 'Palestinian' narrative of Israel's sole right to our land being based on the Holocaust, and the disavowal of the Bush letter - set the tone for the relationship, and it's up to Obama - more likely to his successor - to reset that tone.
Yesterday, I met with the Washington correspondent of a US-based newspaper. She asked me how Israelis feel about the United States. I told her 'Israelis love the United States and the American people. Israelis hate Obama. For good reason.'
One evening this past September, Vice President Joe Biden and his
wife, Jill, hosted a gathering in Washington to celebrate Rosh Hashanah,
the Jewish new year. The guests—political supporters, leaders of Jewish
organizations, members of Congress, Jewish officials of the Obama
administration, and the stray journalist or two—gathered by the pool of
the vice president’s house, on the grounds of the U.S. Naval
Observatory.
Biden was characteristically prolix. He talked about the Shoah, and
about the many contributions Jews have made to American life, and he
mentioned, as he invariably does in such settings, his first encounter
with a legendary Israeli prime minister.
“I had the great pleasure of knowing every prime minister since Golda
Meir, when I was a young man in the Senate, and I’ll never forget
talking to her in her office with her assistant—a guy named Rabin—about
the Six-Day War,” he said. “The end of the meeting, we get up and walk
out, the doors are open, and … the press is taking photos … She looked
straight ahead and said, ‘Senator, don’t look so sad … Don’t worry. We
Jews have a secret weapon.’ ”
He said he asked her what that secret weapon was.
“I thought she was going to tell me something about a nuclear
program,” Biden continued. “She looked straight ahead and she said, ‘We
have no place else to go.’ ” He paused, and repeated: “ ‘We have no
place else to go.’ ”
“Folks,” he continued, “there is no place else to go, and you
understand that in your bones. You understand in your bones that no
matter how hospitable, no matter how consequential, no matter how
engaged, no matter how deeply involved you are in the United States …
there’s only one guarantee. There is really only one absolute guarantee,
and that’s the state of Israel. And so I just want to assure you, for
all the talk, and I know sometimes my guy”—President Obama—“gets beat up
a little bit, but I guarantee you: he shares the exact same commitment
to the security of Israel.”
BREAKING: MoD Yaalon: Israel didn't receive any formal complaint from the US about alleged Israeli spying against American officials
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) March 24, 2015
Odd? Not really. This is standard operating procedure for Obama.
If this story is true, Prime Minister Netanyahu has proven once again that he does not trust the Obama administration, and that he is willing to do whatever must be done to protect Israel, even at the cost of offending King Hussein. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Israel 'spied' on the nuclear talks with Iran (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). I'm going to post a lot of this article, because it's not freely available online and I got it by email from another source.
The
spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations
and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal,
current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping,
Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants
and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said.
The
espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of
inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a
high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and
former officials said.
“It
is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is
another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to
U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy,” said a senior U.S.
official briefed on the matter.
The
U.S. and Israel, longtime allies who routinely swap information on
security threats, sometimes operate behind the scenes like
spy-versus-spy rivals. The White House has largely tolerated Israeli
snooping on U.S. policy makers—a posture Israel takes when the tables
are turned.
The
White House discovered the operation, in fact, when U.S. intelligence
agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli
officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only
from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter
said.
Israeli
officials denied spying directly on U.S. negotiators and said they
received their information through other means, including close
surveillance of Iranian leaders receiving the latest U.S. and European
offers. European officials, particularly the French, also have been more
transparent with Israel about the closed-door discussions than the
Americans, Israeli and U.S. officials said.
Using
levers of political influence unique to Israel, Messrs. Netanyahu and
Dermer calculated that a lobbying campaign in Congress before an
announcement was made would improve the chances of killing or reshaping
any deal. They knew the intervention would damage relations with the
White House, Israeli officials said, but decided that was an acceptable
cost.
The
campaign may not have worked as well as hoped, Israeli officials now
say, because it ended up alienating many congressional Democrats whose
support Israel was counting on to block a deal.
Obama
administration officials, departing from their usual description of the
unbreakable bond between the U.S. and Israel, have voiced sharp
criticism of Messrs. Netanyahu and Dermer to describe how the relationship has changed.
“People
feel personally sold out,” a senior administration official said.
“That’s where the Israelis really better be careful because a lot of
these people will not only be around for this administration but
possibly the next one as well.”
THEY feel sold out? Well, BOO HOO. The Obama administration has done everything in its power over the last six years to weaken relations between the United States and Israel. They expect us to trust them? I'm thrilled that Netanyahu is capable of seeing and admitting that this administration is no friend of Israel, and last week's election results prove that most Israelis can see that there is a difference between our relations with the United States and the American people and our relations with this administration. Most Israelis didn't fall for the simplistic argument advanced by the Left that Netanyahu was ruining our relations with the United States.
As to the last sentence, that's yet another incentive for Israelis to work for a Republican candidate for President in 2016. Ted Cruz, who announced yesterday, would be excellent.
The article goes on to state that Israel might have spied because the Obama administration launched these talks in 2012 without telling us, and didn't tell us about them until September 2013 (gee, talk about creating mistrust). The article also says that Netanyahu's office denies that we spied on the US (we routinely spy on Iran, but the US knows that because they helped set up our system for doing so!).
Israeli officials, who said they had already learned about the talks
through their own channels, told their U.S. counterparts they were upset
about being excluded. “ ‘Did the administration really believe we
wouldn’t find out?’ ” Israeli officials said, according to a former U.S.
official.
The
episode cemented Mr. Netanyahu’s concern that Mr. Obama was bent on
clinching a deal with Iran whether or not it served Israel’s best
interests, Israeli officials said. Obama administration officials said
the president was committed to preventing Iran from developing nuclear
weapons.
Mr.
Dermer started lobbying U.S. lawmakers just before the U.S. and other
powers signed an interim agreement with Iran in November 2013. Mr.
Netanyahu and Mr. Dermer went to Congress after seeing they had little
influence on the White House.
Before
the interim deal was made public, Mr. Dermer gave lawmakers Israel’s
analysis: The U.S. offer would dramatically undermine economic sanctions
on Iran, according to congressional officials who took part.
After
learning about the briefings, the White House dispatched senior
officials to counter Mr. Dermer. The officials told lawmakers that
Israel’s analysis exaggerated the sanctions relief by as much as 10
times, meeting participants said.
When
the next round of negotiations with Iran started in Switzerland last
year, U.S. counterintelligence agents told members of the U.S.
negotiating team that Israel would likely try to penetrate their
communications, a senior Obama administration official said.
The
U.S. routinely shares information with its European counterparts and
others to coordinate negotiating positions. While U.S. intelligence
officials believe secured U.S. communications are relatively safe from
the Israelis, they say European communications are vulnerable.
So maybe we didn't spy on the US. Maybe we spied on the Europeans. Or maybe the Europeans - or at least France - decided to tell us about it. Hey Obama - you keep saying that you're our ally and that you have our back and your party chaircritter keeps saying that she wears her support to Israel to work on her sleeve every day. So how can you keep something like this from us for a year? How can you do this behind our backs? It's our existence at stake - not yours! What do you expect us to do in response?
Or maybe we spied on Iran.
Current and former Israeli officials said their intelligence agencies
can get much of the information they seek by targeting Iranians and
others in the region who are communicating with countries in the talks.
In November, the Israelis learned the contents of a proposed deal
offered by the U.S. but ultimately rejected by Iran, U.S. and Israeli
officials said. Israeli officials told their U.S. counterparts the terms
offered insufficient protections.
And this story is apparently how Netanyahu's address to a joint session of Congress came about too.
In January, Mr. Netanyahu told the White House his government intended
to oppose the Iran deal but didn’t explain how, U.S. and Israeli
officials said.
On Jan. 21, House Speaker John Boehner (R.,
Ohio) announced Mr. Netanyahu would address a joint meeting of
Congress. That same day, Mr. Dermer and other Israeli officials visited
Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers and aides, seeking a bipartisan
coalition large enough to block or amend any deal.
...
Mr. Dermer and other Israeli officials over the following weeks gave
lawmakers and their aides information the White House was trying to keep
secret, including how the emerging deal could allow Iran to operate
around 6,500 centrifuges, devices used to process nuclear material, said
congressional officials who attended the briefings.
The Israeli officials told lawmakers that Iran would also be permitted
to deploy advanced IR-4 centrifuges that could process fuel on a larger
scale, meeting participants and administration officials said. Israeli
officials said such fuel, which under the emerging deal would be
intended for energy plants, could be used to one day build nuclear
bombs.
...
When asked in February during one briefing where Israel got its inside
information, the Israeli officials said their sources included the
French and British governments, as well as their own intelligence,
according to people there.
“Ambassador Dermer never shared confidential intelligence information
with members of Congress,” Mr. Sagui said. “His briefings did not
include specific details from the negotiations, including the length of
the agreement or the number of centrifuges Iran would be able to keep.”
'Current and former US officials' claim that Dermer did tell Congress those details.
All of this has come at a cost, and Israel is seeking new ways to defeat a deal with Iran.
Congressional aides and Israeli officials now say Israel’s coalition in
Congress is short the votes needed to pass legislation that could
overcome a presidential veto, although that could change. In response,
Israeli officials said, Mr. Netanyahu was pursuing other ways to
pressure the White House.
This week, Mr. Netanyahu sent a delegation to France, which has been
more closely aligned with Israel on the nuclear talks and which could
throw obstacles in Mr. Obama’s way before a deal is signed. The Obama
administration, meanwhile, is stepping up its outreach to Paris to blunt
the Israeli push.
France has not been a better friend to Israel than the United States since the Eisenhower administration. Obama has 'succeeded' in turning back the clock.
One final comment. Obama is lucky this story didn't come out last Sunday or Monday. If it had, the Likud might have won 80 seats in last Tuesday's elections. This story doesn't make Obama into a victim (although I am sure that was the administration's intent in leaking it). This story makes Obama look petty, vindictive, and more than willing to abandon an ally that just happens to be the only democracy in a part of the world that is of critical interest to the United States.
Obama has won the title. He will go down in history as the worst President the United States has ever had.
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
