Obama & THE Problem by Am Yisrael Chai

Am Yisrael Chai

Seeking Justice through Truth

Issue: # 40

May 5, 2009

Newsletter of The Committee for Truth and Justice Obama and Israel
While it is too soon to make conclusions on whether Obama is good for Israel the early signs are surely not good. This is not surprising given Obama's anti-Israel friends, e.g. Khalidi, but there was always hope. We hope again now that these early signs are wrong and that he will continue the long standing support for Israel by the USA and we expect that he will. But still there are these early indications. We post these for your edification and prayers.

We are not making a political statement here, we are just reporting what has been almost universally stated by numerous commentators and newspapers. We simply googled "Obama Israel" and got hundreds of articles with the same theme, i.e., Obama's appointments and actions have so far been detrimental to Israel. There has not been a single action or appointment one can point to that has been pro-Israel and very few can be considered even handed on this issue. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is the only one with any power or role in Mideast affairs that could be considered even-handed or pro-Israel. Rahm Emmanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, is Jewish and his father is from Israel; but he has no power with regard to Israel. Also, there is a long history of the ineffectiveness of Jews close to the president in their ability or desire to help Jews or Israel. These include Morganthau and Roosevelt during WWII, Kissenger and Nixon during Yom Kippur War, and now perhaps Emmanuel and Obama.

We apologize for the length of this post, it is our longest so far. It is very long because we found so many articles with the very same theme. Although we have listed many articles there are many more articles describing anti-Israel actions and appoitnments by Obama that we have not listed in order to limit the length of this post. The only so-called pro-Israel posts we could find were meaningless and vague platitudes by Obama regarding Israel. We could not find a single article describing something that Obama has actually done that could be considered pro-Israel. We also suggest that you investigate this issue yourself by simply googling Obama and Israel, as we have done.
CTJ


The Obama-Netanyahu Schism

By: Joseph Puder

Thursday, April 30, 2009

U.S. President Barack Obama and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the new leaders of their respective democratic nations, are like two horses bound to a carriage, each pulling in a different direction as it relates to Middle East policy. For Netanyahu however, the Middle East is home turf, and any wrong move might have critical if not existential consequences. For Obama on the other hand, half the world away, a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians based on a Two-State solution, would bring him and his administration prestige, and perhaps Arab triumphalism, but little more.
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Obama's Road to Damascus

By: John Perazzo
Tuesday, November 11, 2008

History will record that Barack Obama's first act of diplomacy as America's president-elect took place two days after his election victory, when he dispatched his senior foreign-policy adviser, Robert Malley, to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad-to outline for them the forthcoming administration's Mideast policy vis-à-vis those nations. An aide to Malley reports, "The tenor of the messages was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests" than has President Bush. The Bush administration, it should be noted, has rightly recognized Syria to be not only a chief supporter of the al Qaeda insurgency in Iraq, but also the headquarters of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the longtime sponsor of Hamas-the terrorist army whose founding charter is irrevocably committed to the annihilation of Israel. Yet unlike President Bush, Obama and Malley have called for Israel to engage in peace negotiations with Syria.
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Obama's New Middle East Envoy

By: Fareed Zakaria
Friday, January 23, 2009

Now that President Obama has appointed former Senator George Mitchell as his Middle East envoy, it appears timely to reflect on George Mitchell's 2001 Report, entitled TheMitchell Report on the Al-Aqsa Intifadeh. To refresh the memory of the reader: In late October, 2000, US president Clinton appointed an international investigation commission to investigate the causes of renewed massive violence in Israel, naming an Arab American and former US Senator, George Mitchell, as its chairman, and a Jewish-American, also a former US senator, Warren Rudman, to the panel, together with three prominent European diplomats
Initial reaction in Israel to the publication of the Mitchell Commission report in May, 2001, evoked a sigh of relief when the Mitchell commission did not blame Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for instigating the riots in September, 2000 during his visit to the Temple Mount.
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OBAMA, ISRAEL, AND AMERICAN JEWS -- IT JUST KEEPS GETTING WORSE
By Paul Mirengoff

Why does Barack Obama have so many foreign policy and national security advisers whose statements about Israel and American Jews are problematic? We've written at length about Samantha Power, perhaps his closest foreign policy adviser until she was forced to resign for insulting Hillary Clinton. We've also touched on Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Malley. And by now everyone who follows these things realizes that Obama's long-time spiritual adviser Rev. Wright hates Israel passionately.
Now comes evidence that Gen. Merrill "Tony" McPeak, who serves as Obama's national campaign co-chair and his point man when it comes to establishing the candidate's bona fides on military matters, is also hostile towards Israel, viewing its positions as preventing peace from breaking out in the region. Moreover, in something like the style of Walt-Mearsheimer, he blames American Jews for enabling Israel to take the positions that prevent peace.

Robert Goldberg at the American Spectator provides the details. Goldberg points to a 2003 interview McPeak gave to the Oregonian newspaper, which included this exchange:

McPeak: We don't have a playbook for the Middle East. You know, for instance, obviously, a part of that long-term strategy would be getting the Israelis and the Palestinians together at . . . something other than a peace process. Process is not a substitute for achievement or settlement. And even so the process has gone off the tracks, but the process isn't enough. . . . We need to get it fixed and only we have the authority with both sides to move them towards that. Everybody knows that. Q: So where's the problem? State? White House?

McPeak: New York City. Miami. We have a large vote - vote, here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it.

McPeak then explains that because of the political influence exerted by those New York and Miami Jews, the U.S. can't get "Israelis to stop settling the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and maybe even withdraw some of the settlements that've already been put there." And under these circumstances, "you can't develop a Middle East strategy; it's impossible."

In response to a follow-up question, McPeak gives a bizarre answer in which he seems to equate the extremism of Hamas and Hezbollah with extremism you can find even in Oregon (if you know where to look -- see below). He then concedes that there is some "good will" in Israel (though not apparently among American Jews in New York and Miami) but only perhaps among the "cosmopolitan" set.

Q. Do you think . . . there's an element within Hamas, Hezbollah, that doesn't want Israel to exist at all and always will be there? McPeak: Absolutely.

Q. Yeah. So this is - this is multilateral.
McPeak: There's an element in Oregon, you know, that's always going to be radical in some pernicious way, and likely to clothe it in religious garments, so it makes it harder to attack. So there's craziness all over the place.

I think there is enough good will on the Israeli side - I've spent a lot of time in Israel, worked at one time very closely with the Israeli air force as a junior officer, and so - but that's maybe the more cosmopolitan, liberal version of the Israeli population - I think there's enough good will there - I don't know if there is still on the Palestinian side, because they've been radicalized pretty well. But there's enough good will, I would hope, on both sides that you can get the majority into some kind of a big tent, and make something better than what you've got now. If you do that, you'll still have radicals on both sides doing stupid things, but that is basically a problem in internal security. Hopefully. You can handle it with police. But if you don't do that, I don't see any way to put together a strategy for the Middle East. I mean it's just kind of a linchpin.

Who constitutes this "pernicious element," found even in Oregon, that clothes its radicalism in "religous garments" to "make[] it harder to attack"? Goldberg quotes McPeak as follows:

Let's say that one of your abiding concerns is the security of Israel as opposed to a purely American self-interest, then it would make sense to build a dozen or so bases in Iraq. Let's say you are a born-again Christian and you think that Armageddon and the rapture are about to happen any minute and what you want to do is retrace steps you think are laid out in Revelations, then it makes sense. So there are a number of scenarios here that could lead you in this direction. This is radical. . .The secret of the neoconservative movement is that it's not conservative, it's radical. Goldberg concludes: "Obama can issue all the boilerplate statements supporting Israel's right to defend itself he wants, but until he accepts responsibility for allowing people like McPeak so close to his quest for the presidency, Obama's sincerity and judgment will remain open questions." It seems to me, however, that the question is largely settled, whether Obama accepts responsibility or not.

UPDATE: Ed Lasky has more on McPeak and Obama. He writes:
If Senator Obama becomes President, McPeak might very well be in line for an appointment as Secretary of Defense. Given the close ties between the defense forces of America and Israel, can the millions of supporters of this close alliance [have confidence] that McPeak will not seek to weaken this relationship and make Israel even more vulnerable to the enemies that surround her?

Tuesday, March 25, 2008 www.powerlineblog.com .

Report: Intelligence Warns Israel is now an 'Obstacle to Obama'

by Gil Ronen


(IsraelNN.com) According to a classified intelligence assessment handed to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Barack Obama and his senior advisors wish to "incrementally diminish U.S. strategic cooperation with Israel."
A report in World Tribune quoted an Israeli source familiar with the intelligence assessment who said that "Obama wants to make friends with our worst enemies and [those who were] until now the worst enemies of the United States. Under this policy," the source added, "we are more than irrelevant. We have become an obstacle."

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Obama's stance worries Israelis

Jason Koutsoukis

April 18, 2009

CAN Israel still call the United States its best international friend? Apparently not, if you believe the tone of the local media.

Watching the drama unfold inside Israel, the increasingly tense dialogue between US President Barack Obama and new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking on all the trappings of a duel.

Almost every day brings news of another sore point between the two countries, a source of yet further inflammation of their once warm relations.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the more immediate threat to Israel's national security lay across the Atlantic rather than from closer to home.

It is bad enough that President Obama uses almost every opportunity he can to set the parameters of a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Now US officials are openly using Israeli anxiety over Iran's fledging nuclear program as a bargaining chip to force Israel's hand on giving up control of the West Bank Palestinian territory.

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The Obama Administration Double-Deals On Israel
Anne Bayefsky, 03.01.09, 01:59 PM EST Anti-Semitism, 'Islamophobia,' Durban II and the U.N.

Barack Obama just added double-dealing to his foreign policy repertoire. On Friday, administration officials led many Jewish leaders to believe that the president had decided to boycott the United Nation's "anti-racism" conference known as Durban II. At the same time, however, human rights organizations were being led to believe that the administration was not pulling out and was looking for a way to "re-engage."
Durban II, scheduled for Geneva in April, is the U.N.'s attempt at a rerun of the 2001 global anti-Semitic hate fest held in Durban, South Africa.
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January 16, 2008 Barack Obama and Israel

By Ed Lasky

:
Barack Obama's Middle East Expert
The Audacity of Questioning Obama's Commitment to Israel
Samantha Power and Obama's Foreign Policy Team
More Amateur Hour Diplomacy -- Power Resigns



The ascent of Barack Obama from state senator in Illinois to a leading contender for the Presidential nomination in the span of just a few years is remarkable. Especially in light of a noticeably unremarkable record -- a near-blank slate of few accomplishments and numerous missed votes.

However, in one area of foreign policy that concerns millions of Americans, he does have a record and it is a particularly troubling one. For all supporters of the America-Israel relationship there is enough information beyond the glare of the klieg lights to give one pause. In contrast to his canned speeches filled with "poetry" and uplifting aphorisms and delivered in a commanding way, behind the campaign façade lies a disquieting pattern of behavior.

One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates. This ease around Israel animus has taken various forms. As Obama has continued his political ascent, he has moved up the prestige scale in terms of his associates. Early on in his career he chose a church headed by a former Black Muslim who is a harsh anti-Israel advocate and who may be seen as tinged with anti-Semitism. This church is a member of a denomination whose governing body has taken a series of anti-Israel actions.
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How Obama's America Might Threaten Israel

Norman Podhoretz

May 2009


Subject: How Obama's America Might Threaten Israel

Is there a threat to Israel from the United States under Barack Obama? The question itself seems perverse. For in spite of the hostility to Israel in certain American quarters, this country has more often than not been the beleaguered Jewish state's only friend in the face of threats coming from others. Nor has the young Obama administration been any less fervent than its last two predecessors in declaring an undying commitment to the security and survival of Israel.

Nevertheless, during the 2008 presidential campaign, friends of Israel (a category that, speculations to the contrary notwithstanding, still includes a large majority of the American Jewish community) had ample reason for anxiety over Obama. The main reason was his attitude toward Iran. After all, Iran under its current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was vowing almost on a daily basis to "wipe Israel off the map" and was drawing closer and closer to acquiring the nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles that would give the ruling mullocracy the means to do so. And yet Obama seemed to think that the best way to head off the very real possibility this posed of another holocaust was by entering into talks with Iran "without preconditions." Otherwise, except for campaign promises, his record was bereft of any definitive indication of his views on the war the Arab/Muslim world has been waging against the Jewish state from the day of its founding more than sixty years ago.
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Obama move alarms Israel supporters

David Scull / Bloomberg News
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) says the proposal sounds "completely unworkable."
The administration seeks changes that would permit aid to Palestinians even if officials backed by Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist group, become part of a unified Palestinian government.

By Paul Richter

April 27, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- The Obama administration, already on treacherous political ground because of its outreach to traditional adversaries such as Iran and Cuba, has opened the door a crack to engagement with the militant group Hamas.

The Palestinian group is designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization and under law may not receive federal aid.

But the administration has asked Congress for minor changes in U.S. law that would permit aid to continue flowing to Palestinians in the event Hamas-backed officials become part of a unified Palestinian government.
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