Editorials Skewer the Truth About Obama's Pressure on Israel

Yesterday the Washington Post stated the obvious when it noted that under President Obama, America’s relations with the state of Israel had deteriorated. In contrast to the administration’s desperate efforts to curry favor with Venezuela, Russia, and Iran, the focus of American foreign policy in the past seven months has been to heighten tensions with the Middle East’s sole democracy.

A day later, as if on cue, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times responded with their own editorials in support of Obama’s blundering.

The L.A. Times’s stance, titled “Obama’s evenhanded Mideast policy,” is a straightforward defense of an abrupt change toward Israel while disingenuously claiming that Obama’s friendship with it ought not to be questioned. The editorial endorses the downgrading of the U.S.-Israel alliance from one of close cooperation and support to a more equivocal relationship, in which Israel would be subjected to pressure to conform to specific ideas about achieving peace. Considering “evenhanded” a good approach means ignoring the isolation that would ensue if the United States abandons Israel: the Jewish state would be effectively left without an ally in the region and surrounded by a hostile Islamic culture that still rejects its legitimacy even in those few states that have officially come to terms with it.

But the claim of evenhandedness is itself a falsehood since it is very clear that Obama’s public pressure on Israel far outweighs Washington’s gentle urgings that the Palestinians should cease their support for the infrastructure of terror and to halt the official incitement of hatred toward Jews and Israel that is the hallmark of Palestinian political culture. Nor has the administration’s call for Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations to tone down their hostility toward Israel been either energetic or successful.

The L.A. Times goes as far as to say that Obama is right to scrap George W. Bush’s commitments to Israel, which recognized that a complete withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines would be unrealistic in any peace agreement. Israel paid for this promise in hard currency through a complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and was rewarded for this concession with the creation of a sovereign terrorist Hamasistan that remains free to bombard southern Israel with rockets. If Obama repudiates this promise, why should Israelis trust him when he makes his own guarantees about their country’s safety once a Palestinian state is put in place?

But even more to the point, the notion that as a prerequisite for peace, the U.S.’s demand for an absolute freeze to all building over the green line in both the West Bank and Jerusalem is as absurd as it is unfair. Israel has proved time and again that it will uproot settlements in exchange for peace or even for the false hope of quiet, as was the case with Gaza. The demand for a freeze does not advance negotiations; it is a substitute for talks, since squeezing Israel in this manner predetermines the outcome in favor of the Palestinians. That is not a negotiation but rather a dictate.

But the L.A. Times’s editorial almost makes the New York Times pronouncement on the issue seem reasonable. The New York paper recognizes that Obama has been less than assertive in trying to pressure the Arabs to make peace. Though it shares the false assumption that American pressure on Israel is a form of friendship, it is at least honest enough to note that the Israeli people aren’t buying it. Though it has long been accepted as a fact that for an Israeli prime minister to butt heads with an American president is to court political suicide, polls consistently show that Israelis don’t trust Obama and support Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to stand up against American pressure.

In response, the N.Y. Times endorses the Israeli Left’s appeal for Obama to speak directly to the Israeli people by going over the head of their democratically elected government to convince them that he is in a better position to know what is good for Israel.

Ironically, this call for an Obama rhetorical special to win over skeptical Israelis speaks to the fatal flaw in the reasoning of both the administration and its cheering section among daily editorial writers. The reason Israelis reject Obama’s pressure to make concessions is that they know — even if the president doesn’t — that there is currently no Palestinian peace partner with whom one can make peace.

The reason the Israeli Left has been so discredited is that Palestinians have consistently shattered its lofty plans. Neither Fatah nor Hamas has any desire to sign a peace deal with Israel, as the last decade has proved over and over again. Moreover, Israelis know all too well that land given up may well be converted into a terrorist launching pad in the same manner, as was the case in Gaza. While the majority of Israelis would not just freeze settlements but even destroy most of them in exchange for real peace, making more concessions in exchange for more terror and insecurity makes no sense. And that is a fact that no amount of U.S. pressure or Obama rhetoric can obscure.

Even this fine article overlooks what is really troubling the Israelis:the steady, relentless development of deliverable nuclear weapons by Iran. Work on development of these weapons has continued apace during political turmoil in Iran and even the country's almost-nonexistent “liberal”
elements favor the weapons’ development. Iran's leaders have promised more than once to obliterate Israel, a small country that could not survive a well executed nuclear first strike. The Israelis know the Europeans lack the will to stop the Iranians. And now they are faced with a weak and ineffective American administration as well. Friendless before an existential threat to their very existence, the Palestinians should be the LAST thing on Israel's mind.

Lots of words, nothing conclusive.

I'll say it plainly: Israel - your local Jewish remnant have helped immensely to elect a Marxist. They've been building up to this final conclusion for years. The Christian community have been trying desperately to avert this outcome.

Once again, you are on your own at this point. Good luck and God speed.

6 posted on 08/01/2009 1:20:41 AM PDT by MissDairyGoodnessVT ("Economy is the method by which we prepare today to afford the improvements of tomorrow"C.Coolidge)

Fatah has never recognized Israel’s right to exist and it has no intention of ever doing so, a veteran senior leader of the Western-backed faction said on Wednesday.

‘snip’

“All these reports about recognizing Israel are false,” Natsheh, who is closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, said. “It’s all media nonsense. We don’t ask other factions to recognize Israel because we in Fatah have never recognized Israel.”

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1248277865155&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

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