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Thursday, March 25, 2010

Victor Davis Hanson on Obama's abandonment of Israel

I wish things weren't this bad, but unfortunately, Victor Davis Hanson has nailed it once again.

So we are watching unfold a sort of Chicago-style Realpolitik, flavored with the traditional academic leftist disdain for the Jewish state. The subsequent result is not so much a cut-off of U.S. aid as a subtle shift in perception abroad: Israel’s multiple enemies now are almost giddy in sensing that America is not all that into protecting the Jewish state, intellectually or morally. And given the nature of the UN, given the power of oil, given endemic anti-Semitism, given the collapse of classical liberal thought in Europe (e.g., Britain was far more deferential to Libya in repatriating a supposedly “terminally ill” mass murderer to Tripoli than it is currently with Israel), and given the realpolitik amorality of Russian and Chinese foreign policy, the world as a whole can now far more easily step up its own natural pressure on Israel, at just the moment when it increasingly has no margin of error with a soon-to-be nuclear Iran.

Once the U.S. blinks, the floodgates open — that is the real lesson from the incremental, but unmistakable shift in U.S.-Israeli relations. Like radical shifts in thinking about health care, energy use, and amnesty, so too abroad Obama realizes that the difficult process of "change," in this case of becoming a neutral in the Middle East and deeming Israel's democracy unexceptional in the region, will require all sorts of dissimulation, denials, clarifications, and acrimony. But ultimately, the end of "solving" the Middle East crisis will be seen as well worth the now unpleasant and often tawdry means of doing it.
Read it all. And start praying for us.

2 Comments:

At 2:28 AM, Blogger Nomadic100 said...

I am praying...But it is evident that American Jewish support of the Left and of Obama gives him far more room to undermine Israel than would be the case if the political orientation of U.S. Jews were different. U.S. Jews have promoted the political power of a man who would happily see Israel disappear. And they still don't get it! How many Israelis think it likely that Obama could be a closet Muslim? I'll bet their numbers are increasing by the day!

 
At 2:53 AM, Blogger NormanF said...

Carl - Israel is effectively on its own under this Administration - and its terms for restoring the relationship status quo ante is simply too high a price for most Israelis to pay.

Its going to get a rougher from here on.

 

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