The ground is fast sinking beneath the feet of President Obama’s Jewish defenders. While the president is trying to raise money from Jewish donors by patting himself on the back as Israel’s greatest friend in the White House, the Secretary of Defense has now made it clear that he sees the Jewish state as responsible for the isolation it faces. Equally as egregious is the fact that Howard Gutman, Obama’s ambassador to Belgium, told an audience this week he thinks Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is responsible for the creation of a new kind of anti-Semitism that he believes is understandable on some level.
Panetta’s speech on Friday at the Brooking Institution in Washington and Gutman’s comments to a conference held by the European Jewish Union were obviously not coordinated, but they combine to give us a clear view of the distorted mindset of administration officials. This is an administration that sees Israel as a source of trouble, not an ally. Combined with the sorry history of three years of Obama’s picking fights with Jerusalem, the positions of both Panetta and Gutman give the lie to the notion this is an administration friends of Israel can trust.
That the secretary of defense would choose to blast Israel in this manner just as Obama is starting to crank up his re-election campaign speaks to the cognitive dissonance many Jewish Democrats are experiencing. For Panetta to claim Israel is responsible for its own isolation just as Obama boasted of his friendship for the Jewish state shows either a lack of coordination between the Pentagon and the White House or a desire on the president’s part to signal the Arab world he is prepared to put the screws to the Israelis as soon as the election is concluded.
As for Panetta’s assertions, while sandwiched between some of the usual boilerplate rhetoric about supporting the alliance, they made it clear that Washington views the hardening of anti-Israel positions on the part of Turkey, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority as Israel’s fault. Even more, he made it plain that the administration’s belief is this rising tide of anti-Israel hate can only be dealt with by a new round of concessions on Israel’s part to the Palestinians.
Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt is now endangered by the victory of Islamists. Their former ally Turkey is now aligning itself with Hamas terrorists. The Palestinian Authority is about to conclude a unity pact with Hamas that will end its experiment with good government and expand the reach of the Gaza-based terrorists. These events are not the fault of Israel, but are the result of the embrace of Islamism and extremism by a Muslim world that seems to be sinking into the abyss of extremism.
But the administration looks at this and says it is the fault of the Israelis who have spent the last 18 years trying to make peace, to no avail. Rather than drawing conclusions from the Palestinians’ rejection of peace and the bloodthirsty hatred for Jews at the heart of the siege of the Jewish state, Panetta believes the time is ripe for Israel to weaken its defenses and hand over more territory that may become another safe haven for terrorists, as Gaza has proved to be.
The secretary’s remarks were a not-so-subtle hint that pressuring Israel is still Obama’s priority. That key officials of this administration could hold onto a belief in a peace process even the so-called moderates of the Palestinian Authority have rejected speaks volumes not so much about their naïveté as it does the grip of ideology on their thinking.
As for Gutman’s remarks, they speak not so much to policy as to the thinking behind it. Contrary to his poorly reasoned formulation, hatred for Israel and Zionism is just a modern variant of traditional Jew-hatred, and not a different belief system that can be rationalized. Anyone who would deny Israel the same right to existence and self-defense they would grant any other country is a bigot. Palestinian suffering is real, but the hatred for the Jews and Israel in the Arab and Islamic world has little to do with policy and everything to do with prejudice.
That an American diplomat would stoop so low as to rationalize that hatred is a disgrace. While the White House sought to distance itself from Gutman’s remarks, his views give those of us who have wondered about the source of the animus for Israel in this administration new insights about the advice Obama has been getting.
Taken together, these two speeches paint a portrait of a government that is at its heart hostile to the Jewish state. Only a blind partisan would think such an administration could be trusted to deal fairly with Israel once the constraints of Obama’s re-election efforts are removed.
Since saying that Obama has been the most pro-Israel President of all time didn't catch on (basically as dumb as the majority of Jews in the US were for voting for him in the first place they are not all that dumb to buy into this garbage) the Obamabots have to blame the problem on someone else, namely Israel. If its Israel's fault then it can't be Obama's, and the Jews should come running home to the DNC.
Both Panetta and Gutman are signalling that Obama will be supporting a Sunni arc to contain the Shi'a arc re: Syria and Iraq; Turley and Saudi Arabia. n nNew York is the real swing state in 2012. n nIs Mossad is training more sharks in the Red Sea?
USA policy towards Israel: n n‘We need you to bleed, and, more importantly, to be seen to bleed, by the Arab world. We will shrink you down, over time, and in return for Arab acquiescence to our needs and machinations in the wider middle east, to the smallest size sustainable by the best military technology and diplomatic invention. When the technology improves, we can and will shrink you down further. This will continue until our needs in the middle east are fulfilled. You cannot refuse. By refusing, you will lose the American veto in the UN Security Council. This will subject you crippling sanctions. You will also lose access to critical military spare parts you must have, and you will lose assurance of resupply in the event of war with your neighbors. ‘ n nOver the last 3 decades, Israel’s improving military technology has resulted not in less pressure to concede territory, but more. n nWith every Israeli military innovation, she gets pressed into smaller quarters. The success of ‘targeted assassinations’ in close quarters, and the development of the defensive ‘iron dome’, do not auger well. n nFast forward 50 years, and you will have the remaining Jews of Israel, the poor, the unconnected, huddled, squatting cheek by jowl under a dome shaped forcefield covering the 200 square miles of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem corridor, watching missiles fired by Arabs and Persians exploding against the shield, sending showers of sparks and debris into the night, wondering when the Arabs will finally figure out how to penetrate the shield, for then it will all be over. Their left of center brethren used their foreign passports and connections to slink away over the preceding 15 years, leaving them to the fate the left's appeasement policies resulted in. The nuclear shield was long ago traded away for paper treaties, under European and American pressure. n nThe world will look on, in paralyzed fascination, as the once mighty reborn state of the Jews awaits destruction. And they will think the Jews are finally getting what they deserve for the murders of Jesus Christ and Mohamed Al Dura.
Anyone who donates to BHO's campaign and believes that he , after patting his back, is the best friend ever of Israel, is a fool and is not watching his actions, and the actions include the words of Panetta and Gutman. Those are BHO's true feelings but he never speaks the truth. Always look to his actions or the words of others in his administration.
The Administration is concerned by the reaction to its helpless Iran policy. Not only Republicans hawks condemn the President's do nothing stance. Recently Washington Post, certainly not an anti-Obama newspaper, said that even in comparison to his European allies, the President is not leading from behind, he is simply behind. Financial Times did not have much better words. Threat of an Israeli attack forces Obama to take more meaningful steps. The easiest thing to do is to blame the Jews, if, as many other have done it in the past, one can mobilize some Jews for the effort, the deflection is even sweeter. n nOne can bring into the polemics a lot of nonsense. Not allowing foreign Government to finance political organizations is called anti-democratic move, although Amnesty International, not exactly a pro-Israeli bastion, forbids it, by virtue of its own by-laws. Blaming Israel for apartheid is another adored slogan of real and virtual antisemites, notwithstanding the fact that 40 percent of East Jerusalem Arabs want to move to Israel, if the city is divided. And there is the eternal issue of settlements, 2 percent of the area, 2 percent of obstacles or much less to peace. It seems that in the eyes of anti-settlement warriors, everything else is solved. n nIf US and others do nothing about Iran, Israeli special forces and air force, will have no choice but to act. n
Don't rule out further appeasement of the opposing Shia hegemony either. n nThe fish rots from the head down.
Typical ranting of a Zionist extremist. Everybody knows that as soon as Israel accepts all demands of the Palestinians Muslims everywhere will turn into modern peace loving liberals. n nI mean really. Look at Europe: They exterminated the Jews as much they could and now they are pacifist, liberal and democratic. Surely this will work in the middle east as well.