I think the episode showed a lot more than that and none of it flattering to Obama.
It shows the Obama is naïve and for the most part ignorant about foreign affairs. Beginning in the debates when he declared he would talk to America's enemies without preconditions, he demonstrated a fundamental naïveté about foreign affairs. Since then he has been doublecrossed by the Russians who made him look treacherous in the eyes of our allies who learned that they could not trust Obama on missile defense. He has gratuitously insulted our closest ally with whom we have a world aligning "special relationship." He has empowered the terrorists in Gaza with promises of bribe money. He has been challenged at sea by the Chinese. He has dismayed our Israeli allies and pissed off the second biggest and perhaps the most influential lobbying group in America.
The appointment itself shows that Obama is worse than naïve, he has simply uncritically swallowed the extreme leftist agenda of the Democrat party. No one else conceivably would have appointed this man to such a post. It would take a man who had already appointed Panetta to the CIA. Obama has revealed himself as simply an extreme doctrinaire leftist and this appointment was a reversion to the default position.
The episode reveals much about why Obama won the election and why criticism of the Obama today is nearly as difficult to mount as it was during the campaign.
The article alleges, in effect, that the Israeli lobby waged a campaign off the radar to frustrate the nomination of an extreme leftist. The article is very thin on supporting evidence for this allegation but let's assume that it is true. Here is what the author says:
But Jewish and pro-Israel organizations largely decided not to make the fight against Freeman a public crusade, though they were the first, and fiercest, Freeman opponents and made their views known privately.
"The vast majority of the Jewish community [were] very careful not to make this a Jewish community issue," said a top official at one major pro-Israel organization.
And indeed, some officials said Israel's allies might be winning the Freeman battle at the expense of larger goals.
I believe the campaign was waged sub rosa because it is not yet safe in America to criticize Obama and even less is it safe to criticize Obama to the American Jewish community. The issue for Israel is existential and the American Jewish community has an absolute constitutional and moral right to lobby its government for the support of Israel over the matter of its very survival. I am not a Jew and I have an equal moral right to lobby the government to act in America's foreign interests free of divided loyalties. The same observation about Cuban-Americans could be made and, equally, the same complaints about divided loyalties might be leveled. There is no need for the American Jews to skulk about when they lobby the Obama administration. Yet, according to this author, they have determined to make their opposition felt but not at a public level. This tells me that the Jewish community in America which supported Obama in the election is divided and probably disillusioned over Obama because of this issue but does not wish to say so publicly.
Is the lobby afraid it might break up the constituency among American Jews? Is it afraid opposition to Obama, if outspoken, might affect fundraising? Is it, as the article implies, that other issues might be compromised which are equally important to Jews who are liberals and Democrats?
Any thinking American Jew who supports Israel must have been made extremely uneasy by Obama's practiced anti-Israeli foreign policies. He should be made equally uneasy that his party cannot accommodate open debate. He should be made very uneasy that the Obama cult of personality remains strong enough to intimidate those who would speak out on behalf of Israel.
There is an old joke that if you see two Jews standing on a street corner you are looking at three political parties. Darkwolf, surely the brilliance and independence of these stiffnecked and contentious people who have so often courageously spoken up for righteousness and morality, will once again energize the conscience of the American Jewish community.
