Posted on 11/05/2013 4:56:59 AM PST by SJackson
All of Obama’s second term foreign policy goals are harmful to Israel. Everything that is good for Obama is necessarily bad for Israel.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu apparently believes the greatest threat the country now faces is an escalated European trade war. He’s wrong. The greatest threat we are now facing is a national leadership that cannot get its arms around changing strategic realities.
Over the weekend, Yediot Aharonot reported that during Secretary of State John Kerry’s seven-hour meeting in Rome last week with Netanyahu, Kerry warned that the price for walking away from the talks with the PLO will be European economic strangulation of Israel.
According to the newspaper, “[T]he secretary of state told the prime minister that he heard from his European friends... that if the negotiations fail, Israel can forget about participating in the European research and development program ‘Horizon 2020.’ “And that will only be the beginning.
More and far weightier actions to boycott Israel will follow. They are already being prepared. This will cause incalculable damage to the Israeli economy.”
On Sunday, outgoing National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror warned the cabinet that Israel’s diplomatic standing and ability to avert a European economic war is dependent on continuing the negotiations with the PLO.
In his words, “It is absolutely clear that our ability to handle international pressure is dependent on making advances in the negotiations. If the negotiations fall apart, it will give justification to all the forces that want to boycott us to do so.”
In other words, the viability of our economy is dependent on the PLO’s willingness to sit at a table with us.
Actually, according to Amidror, the PLO’s sufferance of our leaders is only half the story. The other half is President Barack Obama. As he sees it, Israel’s international position is directly related to Obama’s position.
“Everyone hoping for Obama to be weakened needs to [understand that]...
Israel will also be weakened. There is a connection between these things.”
Apparently based on fear of angering Europe or weakening Obama, Netanyahu has reportedly agreed that early next year the Obama administration will put forward a bridging proposal in the talks. The proposal will have two parts. First, it will contain the details of a new interim arrangement. Second, it will contain the details of a final settlement.
From Obama’s prior statements and consistent policies that castigate the Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria and united Jerusalem as “illegitimate,” it is fairly clear that Obama and Kerry expect Israel to relinquish its legal claims to Judea, Samaria and united Jerusalem in the framework of a final peace.
From a legal and diplomatic perspective, such a move by Israel would be the most disastrous it has ever made. It would empty out our sovereign rights in general. And it would imperil our military viability.
As to the interim deal, from American and European projects on the ground today in Judea and Samaria it is apparent that the plan will require Israel to cede to the PLO its control of planning and zoning in Area C.
Such a move will enable the Palestinians, Europeans and Americans to strangle the Israeli communities in the region and render it practically impossible for the IDF to operate in Judea and Samaria without PLO permission.
THE PROBLEM with the government’s behavior is not simply that it is maintaining allegiance to a policy paradigm that works to our extreme strategic disadvantage.
That’s old news.
The problem is that we are maintaining allegiance to a policy paradigm that is based on inaccurate strategic assumptions.
Amidror spelled them out.
Israel is operating under the assumption that there is a cause and effect relationship between our actions and Europe’s. To wit, if we ditch the phony peace talks, they will destroy our economy.
But there is no cause and effect relationship between Israeli actions and European actions. Europe made hostility toward Israel the centerpiece of its unified foreign policy without connection to Israeli actions. So undertaking strategically damaging talks with the Palestinians to appease Brussels is a fool’s errand.
Then there is Amidror’s assertion that Israel has an interest in strengthening Obama, because if he is weakened, we are weakened.
Certainly such an argument could have been made with regard to Obama’s predecessors in office. But can it be made today? Last week The New York Times revealed Obama’s foreign policy goals for his second term. They are: “negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, brokering peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and mitigating the strife in Syria.”
Will the achievement of these goals – that is, the success of Obama’s second term foreign policy – be helpful to Israel? Consider Syria. Obama negotiated a deal with Russia regarding Syria’s chemical weapons that leaves Iran’s Syrian proxy Bashar Assad in power, and according to chemical weapons inspectors, likely in possession of parts of his chemical arsenal.
Moreover, the Obama administration’s repeated exposure of Israeli military operations against Hezbollah in Syria has harmed Israel’s national security. The administration’s leaks have increased the prospects of war between Israel and Syria.
So a key part of Obama’s Syria policy involves exacting a huge, unexpected cost for every strike Israel has undertaken to prevent Hezbollah from acquiring weapons systems that will imperil Israel.
Then too, Monday Kuwait’s al Anbaa newspaper reported that the State Department is carrying out talks with Hezbollah in Lebanon. According to Lebanese sources quoted in the article, US Ambassador to Lebanon David Hale has told Lebanese leaders that “a cabinet cannot be formed without Hezbollah participation.”
Israel is a victim, not a partner in the US’s Syria policy. Israel is weakened by Obama’s success.
As for Iran, it is now inarguable that the US’s primary objective is not to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is to prevent Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear installations. Here too, success for Obama requires Israel to be imperiled.
Finally, our experience has shown us that peace is not a possible outcome of Obama’s pro-Palestinian policy. The only beneficiaries of administration’s use of European economic blackmail to force Israel to make strategically suicidal concessions to the PLO are the PLO and Hamas, and the anti-Semitic forces in Europe.
All of these parties reject Israel’s right to exist. Weakening Israel in the manner Obama has laid out will increase their appetite for aggression.
SO HERE we are, three for three. All of Obama’s second term foreign policy goals are harmful to Israel. Everything that is good for Obama is necessarily bad for Israel.
It is easy to understand why our leaders insist on holding on to strategic assumptions that are no longer valid. The region is in a state of flux. In stormy seas, our natural inclination is to go back to what has always worked. Since 1968, the conviction that a strong Israel is consonant with US global interests has guided US policy in the Middle East. It’s hard to accept that this is no longer the case.
But we have to accept it. By clinging to our now outdated strategic assumptions, not only are we engaging in dangerous behavior. We are blinding ourselves to new strategic opportunities presented by the chaos in neighboring countries.
True, the new opportunities cannot replace our lost alliance with the US or Europe as a trading partner. But they will get us through the storm in one piece.
It has been posted on this site according to the poster that the head of the Pro-Israel AIPAC lobbying group in the United States was a “bundler” of financial contributions for Obama.
After all the smoke and mirrors is Netanyahu, said to be a great tough Israeli leader, really a pussycat getting ready to cave into the PLO?????
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I know I will be flamed but with the way the Jewish people in America support the democrat fascists, I have given up on supporting them in any manner until they come to their senses.
Here's some strong advice for Israel:
As long as the muzzie usurper is in office DO NOT COUNT ON THE USA!
I’ve never heard that. He might be thinking of Alan Solow who was chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations for a term and a Chicago Obama supporter since his first run in the early 90s
The more religiously serious ones DON’T support Democrats. It’s the self indulgent secular ones that don’t even try to get something serious and constant going with God that are the trouble here.
As though any Jew gives a damn what you think. I certainly don’t, though you help me understand the stereotype of right wing bigots, which carries significant political cost.
The Jews supported Obama.
Obama is a lethal threat to Israel,
Hence, if we use this syllogism, The [American] Jews are a lethal threat to Israel.
When there was talk of bombing Syria we saw Obama, AIPAC and the Netanyahu government through Israel’s ambassador in Washington all appear to be on the same track.
I hope there is not such agreement regarding territorial concessions in Judaea and Samaria coming out of these talks with the Palestinians.
The problem with Israel is you cannot replace the original inhabitants of Palestine with European WW2 Holocaust refugees and get away with it. The Bible is not a real estate guide for claiming lands. At least the Americans outnumbered the Indians and won, the Arabs outnumber the Jews 150 to 1. The Arab passion to drive the Jews into the sea has not waned since 1948. Stretegically Israel is screwed by geography, demographics and now the US realize the high price in treasure and blood for entangling in the Middle East is now wavering in its support for Israel. If the US wants to truly help the Jews, set aside a piece of land in US for a Jewish homeland.
Those sanctions against Israel will be put in place no matter what happens with the PLO. I hope Israel is getting prepared for the day that the USA is a formal enemy. It will probably happen before the end of the kenyan's current term of office. The kenyan dreams of Islamizing the ENTIRE Middle East and he hopes to put the US on an irrevocable path to the same end. That will make for him his place in History. His spokesman has already made the declaration that the USA is an Islamic country. That is not official, I suppose, but it is a big bright red trial balloon.
I certainly hope not but he did just that in his first term of office.
In the aggregate that is surely right. Fortunately serious Jews, believing Jews seem, in the main, to be some of our more sensible citizens.
King James Version:
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
That quote from Holy Scripture is God's unbreakable promise given to Abraham and his progeny 4000 years ago.
The Israelis are God's chosen people, the people through whom He sent His Son Jesus to pay the penalty for mankind's sins. If a man or a nation persecutes Israel or the Israeli people that man or nation comes under God's curse, look up a few photos of post WWII German cities if you doubt it. Those B-17 and B-24 bombers were God's instruments of destruction of a nation that persecuted His chosen people, and our own nation will not avoid a similar fate, or worse, if we continue the current turning against Israel by electing God's, and therefore Israel's, enemies to rule over us.
“Observant”, Torah knowledge Jews are conservatives. The vast majority are not so they tend to lean towards Social Justice BS and Liberal causes. They are blinded by the word...”CHANGE” and then they wonder what went wrong? Deer in the headlights...
Israel is the one place in the world where the Jews have an ancestral claim. It is also the place where Hashem said He would restore the people to their land after two exiles. The world hates Israel and wants to see it destroyed because it is proof that only two religions in the world could possibly be correct: Traditional Judaism and/or the sects of Christianity that admit that God has never annulled His covenants with the Jews.
Israel isn't going anywhere. She may be battered and bruised, but she will stand, and those who stand with her and her children will be blessed while those who oppose her and her children will be judged--even when all the nations of the world rise up to attempt to destroy her.
Shalom
First of all, US setting land aside so the Jews can have a homeland does not mean the Jews will be part of the US. I am advocating an independent Jewish nation formed from some US lands. It will be alot more peaceful then trying to re establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. You are right God will bless those who help the Jews and punish those who are against them. So putting Jews in a geographical kill zone that can ignite a WW3 is helping them??!!!!
It's a kill-zone, all right, but one for the nations who hate Israel, according to Joel, Zechariah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, etc.
Besides, as Efraim Inbar writes, Time Favors Israel, even in a secular analysis. Israel can and will survive and prosper in the long run.
Setting aside a new nation for the Jews in America is a rediculous solution: Do you really think Washington would let "New Israel" be completely self-governing and independent? They won't even do that for the South, or the Native American reservation/"nations." Even if you could somehow get agreement on that, it would be no different than the numerous other times Jews have been given "reservations" in various countries--you're asking Israel to give up the right to be free and sovereign in return for a succor which would, based on 2000 years of experimentation, eventually be violated.
Besides, if you hadn't noticed, we're succumbing to tyrants ourselves, so how could we be in the least bit serious in the offer to let others live free?
Shalom
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