The Obama administration’s Jewish apologists were working overtime last week to pretend there is nothing unusual or unsavory about the president’s penchant for conflict with Israel. Indeed, many on the Left have been talking as if Israel’s resistance to Obama’s demand that no Jews be allowed to build homes in Jerusalem is nothing more than a political ploy on the part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to this interpretation, Obama’s demand for halting housing projects in those city parts occupied by Jordan from 1948 to 1967 is nothing to get upset about and Netanyahu is merely playing to the crowd in a vain attempt to evade the president’s reasonable demands.
Indeed, following my post on the Jerusalem controversy earlier this week, a couple of my left-wing friends told me that I was crazy if I thought any non-extremist American Jews would get worked up over a housing project in East Jerusalem funded by right-wing gadfly Irving Moskowitz.
Fortunately, as previously noted here in CONTENTIONS, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations agreed with Netanyahu that an important principle was at stake in this controversy. It is true that previous administrations have opposed similar building plans, such as the one in Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood and other developments linked to Moskowitz. But the point is, contrary to the Obama apologists’ position, this administration has raised the stakes on Jerusalem in a way very different from its predecessors’ actions.
It is one thing to make a pro forma objection to a specific development; it is quite another to speak, as the State Department has, as if there is no difference between a neighborhood in Israel’s capital and the farthest corner of the West Bank.
And for those who continue to be in denial about the new atmosphere between Israel and Washington, let’s have an explanation for State Department spokesman Robert Wood’s statement on Tuesday night, according to which financial sanctions on Israel were merely “premature,” in case Israel did not bend to the administration’s will regarding building homes in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Premature? That is more or less the same way this administration has spoken about adopting tougher sanctions on Iran.
Dismiss it as a gaffe if you like, but the use of the word clearly indicates that sanctions on Israel are not only thinkable but are being discussed. An Israeli official speaking off the record to the Jerusalem Post about this dismissed the threat as “nonsense.” He went on to say, “There is no way that at the same time it wants to engage with the Iranians, it is going to take sanctions against Israel. It just doesn’t make sense.”
No, it doesn’t. But that such craziness is actually being tossed around in Washington these days shows just how much things have changed under Obama. In the meantime, as the same Jerusalem Post article indicated, Israeli officials are now considering what they would do should a halt to U.S. military assistance be enacted — as a mere possibility, of course.
That such an eventuality is not a far-fetched scenario but a real-life threat that Jerusalem must take seriously speaks volumes about its current predicament. For months, Obama’s Jewish supporters and apologists have been telling us that it was too soon to judge the president’s attitude toward Israel. But their reluctance to break ranks with a popular liberal Democrat has put them in a position of supporting a government that seems more interested in getting tough with Jerusalem than with the tyrannical Islamist regime in Tehran.
persistence = “stay the course”. Isn’t this the club dems were beating republicans with all through the election year of 2006?
Abey – outside of yourself – and a few Neo-COn hardliners – do you really believe that anyone gives a hoot what Billy Kristol has to say? If any of the Bushian water carryers have been ridiculed and discredited it’s William Kristol.
But let’s say he’s not the Fireign Policy version of Bozo the Clown…
Under the last administration – you know, the one that gets you sexually excited, Iran ramped up their nuclear facilites unfettered – all the while, North Korea exploded a nuclear weapon at an underground test site.
Gee, if ONLY Obama were to look to you guys for advice…
OK, it’s an attitude or a personality trait, not a philosophy.
Persistence in folly can be thickheadedness, true, but in other cases (removing a tight lid from a jar, learning to skate( it can be quite helpful.
In mediating an intractable dispute, like Israel/Palestine, persistence can be useful, if one’s approach is not mere folly.
I didn’t vote for him, but give the guy a chance. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Persistence? from the cut and run crowd? No, I don’t buy it for a second.
Persistence in this context mean liberal omniscience. It means being right all of the time, and waiting for reality to bow before President Oprompter.
What achievement in Oprompter’s past can you point to, that shows he could build Rome? He couldn’t even build a stimulus plan without a bonus exemption.
He couldn’t build a campaign for the Illinois or U.S. Senate without kneecaping his opponent. He was persistent in the kneecaping process, though.
“What achievement in Oprompter’s past can you point to, that shows he could build Rome?”
if ONLY he’d appeared in a Hollywood film along side a monkey…
Oh, and ratted out his buddies to House UnAmerican Committee
THEN you’d be satisifed…
Kedja, can you please institute a registration process here and then ban Warpublican. He’s taking free speech too far.
I used to be on Michael’s Facebook. I was the den mother. Thanks in advance
Obama’s modus operandi:
1. Cover your own behind on a daily basis and attempt to preemptively insulate yourself from the perception of failure. Hence, the use of “persistence” and “jobs saved”.
2. Redefine the problems into obscurity. Our economic collapse can be cured by socialized medicine, cap and trade, and education spending, despite there being absolutely no discernable relation? “Overseas Contingency Operation”?
3. Evade a clear definition of your position. “Wrestling with the issue” on stem cells.
4. Appear pragmatic, focusing on “what works” without ever defining what that would happen to be.
5. Launch a study group to appear active, while delaying a decision until the political heat passes or a consesus forms. Coming up with an alternative to Guantanamo isn’t so easy? Better launch a study group.
6. Roll with the tide of public opinion to deflect blame. He’s choking with anger at AIG, when his team helped prepare them the bonus loophole? When in doubt, spout angry populist rhetoric, especially the kind that accuses the rich of coming by their wealth through dishonesty (like in the written introduction to his budget).
7. Spend like there’s no tomorrow. But only on the liberal wish list. Act like it has something to do with economic recovery.
8. On all (trivial) spending cuts, target soldiers, charities, and businessmen.
9. Grab as much power as possible. Nationalize industries “too large to fail” (banks, automotive, insurance, and newspapers). Take over the census (and hand it off to ACORN).
10. Save the economy by attacking everyone most vital to economic recovery (the productive members of society, investors, bankers, the energy sector, etc.). Make their futures so uncertain that they stick their investment capital in a jar and bury it in the backyard.
11. When taxing more becomes politically dangerous, print another trillion so you won’t have to stop spending. No one will notice that their money doesn’t buy as much as it used to. What’s stagflation, anyway?
12. Ignore national defense and foreign policy altogether. During a huge spending spree, slash defense. Look for any opportunities to cozy up to Russia, China, and Iran, and disappoint our allies in the process.
13. Massively distort budget estimates and assumptions just to make them seem more palatable. Let the CBO sort out your mistakes.
14. Play on public fear whenever an item of your agenda comes up for a vote, then immediately cool the rhetoric once it passes.
15. Blame the previous administration.
Well, I’m relieved to learn that persistence is just common garden-variety persistence, and not some new postmodern philosophy that Prof. Obama was going to teach us.
The concept is to bang your head against the wall until the wall breaks. In the meantime, the distracted public has its pockets picked.
#7
FWIW: I “vote” against registration.
I agree that Warpublican is an infantile little troll who could not reach the high intellectual achievement of the scum floating on a cesspool – or even of the bottom-feeders that live underneath the scum.
It is shallow; it is stupid; it is uniformed; it is infinitely unworthy even to inhale the farts of the second dumbest commenter here.
So skipping past its fecal vomiting is easy.
Or, in other words, it does not begin to be worthy of the effort of making everyone sign in to get rid of it.
Or of forcing writers to read every comment on what they have written.
“Persistence”…a trait by any other name, eg: stubborn, bull-headed, inflexible, and all the other words …that George W. Bush has been called over the last 8 years…the hypocrisy is dripping off the tongues of Obama and the media. They all need bibs.
7 and 11,
I agree there are some regular visitors to this site with whom I regularly disagree. I find it vaguely comforting, however, to see that these arguments, when placed up against the arguments from the right, some of the best of which occur on this site, never seem to stand a chance. I firmly believe that these are the liberals who like to go toe to toe with the best arguments from the right and to give their best arguments in response. To see how often their opinions are distorted by fallacy, unchecked premises, and shallow rhetoric reminds me that, if these are the liberals willing to engage intelligent conservative thought, then battle of ideas has already been won. How often do their comments devolve into groundless ad hominem attacks against the writers/readers of this blog and/or Bush/Cheney? It also reminds me that, despite having the more consistent and realistic philosophy, we are fighting against more than an opposing argument that can be rationally refuted. We are fighting irrationality itself, in all its different breeds. We are not just arguing against ignorance and shallow thinking. We are arguing against the willfully blind, whose shambles of a philosophy hangs by a thread, but who hang onto that thread for dear life. In order to keep from losing rational grounds for maintaining a flawed philosophy, they will ignore the facts of reality, fight dirty, and dismiss all disagreement as based on bias or bad intent. Yet, on this site, the liberal dissenters are obviously somewhat intelligent although misguided, so we get to see the best arguments that flawed philosophies have to offer. And what they offer is the same old refutable, ad hominem garbage. So I take solace in knowing the best of our adversaries, and also in knowing that they can be defeated. We must be doing something right.
SNAFU,
I don’t think anybody here needs a Den Mother, unless her name is NANC, in which case I withdraw my comment.
Warren,
how did you get your hands on that internal Obama Administration memo? Our Messiah is going to sic Eric Holder and the Justice department on you for leaking it.
“I agree that Warpublican is an infantile little troll who could not reach the high intellectual achievement of the scum floating on a cesspool – or even of the bottom-feeders that live underneath the scum.”
IOW – you can’t refute a single thing I say – so you insult me – either that or I get you hot…
But I repeat – William Kristol is a flop who is widely ridiculed as a fool. And Reagan – aside from turning in his buddies to commie haters, DID appear on screen with a monkey – he also raised taxes to fix his mess…