You would think pro-Israel Democrats would be irate at President Obama’s dismissive attitude toward Israel and his refusal to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu this week. But with the election a month away, partisanship has won over:
”I don’t think it’s necessary for the president to rearrange his schedule,” Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.), the top Democrat on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, told The Hill. ”I didn’t think it was appropriate for the prime minister to publicly get into a dispute with the president of the United States, since we’re both very closely working together to impose sanctions and to force Iran to stop its development of a nuclear weapon.”
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, blamed ”internal Israeli politics” for the spat.
”Maybe Netanyahu’s for [Republican candidate Mitt] Romney. And he’s making a mistake if he is,” Frank told The Hill when asked why he thought Israel had leaked the news of a perceived ”snub” to the Reuters wire service.
Yes, you read that right. Obama rejects a meeting with Netanyahu, and Netanyahu is to blame for the “dispute” because he supposedly allowed this news to leak to the media. Frank and Waxman seem more concerned that Obama’s snub went public than by the snub itself. In fact, Waxman doesn’t seem to think it was a snub at all — “I don’t think it’s necessary for the president to rearrange his schedule [for Netanyahu],” he told The Hill. If that’s the case, what exactly is Waxman annoyed at Bibi about? It’s not like the prime minister has been out there blasting Obama for rejecting the meeting. Contrary to the claims of conspiracy theorists, Netanyahu can’t control what Republicans say on the campaign trail, and their attacks on Obama over this are not his responsibility.
But not all pro-Israel Democrats are siding with Obama on this one. Ed Koch is once again furious with the president for the snub, Michael Goodwin reports:
“I’m pissed,” [Koch] told me. “I’m not off the bus yet, but I’m pissed and I’m going to harangue them.”
The anger has a familiar, even circular ring: Obama’s making America look like a paper tiger in the face of Islamic violence, and his policy toward Israel is wrong. Obama’s refusal to meet last week with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “unacceptable.”
“There should be a certain courtesy involved,” Koch said. “You don’t just say we can’t fit him into our schedule.”
Exactly. Obama’s rejection isn’t just troubling for the U.S.-Israel relationship, it also sends a detrimental message to the countries that have knives out for Israel. In his interview with the Washington Post yesterday, Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed Israeli threats as mere bluster. The cracks in the U.S.-Israeli relationship must be giving him great encouragement.
They are "Pro Israel" in the same sence that some Democrats claim to be "Pro Life": that is, they hold that position firmly, at least until the slightest pressure from Obama to change it (i.e., on Obamacare, when they caved). n nAnd this is not just because it is an election: the "Pro Israel" Dems have been giving aid and comfort to Obama all along. That is how he got to this position.
Ben's a -rick,and he's annoying to boot,Obama shouldn't waste his time on him.. nHowever,Ben could meet with Romney again,LOL,(can you imagine what a man as learned as BN is in politics and history,would think of a doofus like Mittens?) Mittens=S mayo on a salami sandwich.
Um: Obama isn't exactly "learned" himself. As I'm sure you know, the former Dean of the University of Chicago Law School has gone on record stating that Obama was never offered a tenure track position (because the school had standards). What's more, while he claimed to have been an academic, he's published exactly zero articles in peer reviewed journals. Finally, if Obama truly is the intellectual his fans claim he is, he'd have no problem releasing his college transcripts to the public. As anyone not drinking the cool-aid knows, Barry is an intellectual midget.
Pretty interesting that the only comments you can make are insults…Shows the level of your intelligence….
I also just complimented BN(u201cas learned as BN is in politics and historyu201d). Youu2019re never satisfied,you ingrate. LOL
Okay, that excuses your gratuitous insult toward him and toward Romney? I am not the biggest fan of either of them, but each of them has more brains — and more class — in the cuticle on his little finger than you have shown in all your posts on Contentions.
The Chickenhawk Romney ,so much brains and class LOL
More class — and brains — in his little finger than you will have in your life time. You have proven that again and again.
Unfortunately your remarks: the discussion.
Well, it is interesting to note that Obama now has company on his "throw Israel the bus apology tour". Nice to see the Dem. leadership can be as anti-Israel as your average anti-semite (how progessive!)
Why is anyone even paying attention to Waxman and Frank on Israel? nThe last remaining pro-Israel Dem is NY's Engel, and even he has been muzzled by the O. nBesides, I thought today's news is that Obama is NOT having any bilateral sidebars this week.
I hate to repeat what I wrote some time ago- reform and unaffiiated American jews are not pro-israel.Their degree of assimilation is deep and they don't see israel as part of their patrimony. Not surprising that Waxman and Frank have turned their guns on Israel.
Their degree of assimilation is deep and they don't see israel as part of their patrimony n nShould they? My family came from Holland;I certainly don't see Holland as part of my patri/matrimony. Should I? n
It would be fine if you did. Plenty of Americans feel affection, even a sense of "patrimony," for certain other countries (other than Israel) to which they are connected in some way. Israel has a lot to commend it not only to Jewish Americans but all Americans, but I would expect Jews to feel that way more than non-Jews (though in fact many non-Jews are Israel's best friends–and God bless them for it).
Whatever,My #1hot button issue that determines my support,is NO PREEMPTIVE STRIKE ON IRAN BY THE US. Israel will make her own,very separate decision regarding Iran.
It's not a question of patrimony. It's a question of feeling a tie to one's fellow Jews, and not standing by while the leader of the world's largest superpower, which professes to be Israel's ally, announces his willingness to stand by idly and allow the insane dictator of a muderous rogue state obtain the capacity to build nuclear weapons with the announced goal of exterminating roughly half of the world's remaining Jewish population.
It's a question of feeling a tie to one's fellow Jews The world is unfair,Jews make up less than 2% of the US population,and Israel is not the 51ST state. If Israel wants a war,fine,I donu2019t think that most of the US citizens feel that way.
No, idiot. Israel does NOT want a war. Israel has had war imposed on it repeatedly since (and even before) its founding, and jerks like you have tried to make it impossible for Israel to defend itself. Iran has already committed numerous acts of war against Israel and against the US, but unlike you (and President Obama), Israel is smart enough to realize that if you are going to be in a war, it is best to be in it on your own terms, and that defending against a nuclear armed Iran will be much more difficult than against an Iran that lacks nuclear weapons.
Yeah, who do those uppity Jews think they are, wanting to defend themselves against obliteration? Why should anyone be inconvenienced over a mere 2% of the population? n
I'm not Jewish. I was a lifelong Democrat. But when you combine the history of the Holocaust and the nuclear weapons in the possession of those who send children (their own children) to clear mine fields then you know that they hate Israel and will stop at nothing to destroy her. Maybe Rexford 2446 should not feel an affinity to Holland. But he certainly should feel an affinity to those innocents who are daily threatened with annihilation from a power that will soon have the capability of doing.
actually, yes, you should consider holland your ancestral home. The Irish do, The Italians do, for heaven's sake , the latinos are all proud ab out it..so why shouldn't you?
Well, its pretty easy for Waxman to turn up his nose at Netanyahu. n n
LOL! A more porcine schnozzola doesn't exist!
Fine. Message understood. Ratchet down the level of relations between Israel and the US. For instance since the US refuses to name the capital of Israel, dial down the diplomatic level of the 'embassy' in Tel Aviv to some lower status. A consulate perhaps. Here in Raleigh NC there's a Mexican consulate in a shopping center around the corner from Trader Joe's. It serves to smooth out illegal alien deportation issues since there's a massive number of them here. That's what the American facility in Tel Aviv should be dialed down to. And since Obama will never set foot in Israel, they may as well ask them to put that in writing too.
Democ-rats of Jewish origin have been anti-Israel for at least two decades and have always looked for excuses to bash every israeli government regardless of ideology. The Waxmans, the Loweys, the Nadlers and his predessor Weiss, the Rosenthals, Engels, Ackermans, Wasserperson-Schmutzes and especially the Barney Franks are Democ-RATS before they are Jews and always have been. To them the Democ-rat Party, coalition of scum, slime, filth, vermin and manure that it is, is their synagogue. They are ther moral equivalents of complient Judenrat members and concentration camp capos. Even someone among them like Ed Koch can't see his way clear to finally leave them–what a waste!
If you mean A.M. Rosenthal- he was the staunchest suppporter of Israel once he stopped being the Publisher of the NY Times and wrote his own column.
Wax and wane, he must be supporting J-street!
Forget being Jewish, forget Israel completely — does openly and flamboyantly gay Barney Frank have any idea what would happen to him, personally, in Iran? They may wish to "kill the Jews" but they they take this exponentially a few steps higher in their desire to exterminate any scintilla of homosexuality in as immediate and brutal a fashion as possible. Knocking walls over onto people and such, that is reality in Iran. n nI was shingling a roof and listening to the Q&A of Ahmadinejad's "speech" at Princeton (I think it was) a few years back and I almost fell off the roof laughing when a sincere-sounding student inquired as to the status of gays & lesbians in Iran. Ahmadinejad's reply: "We don't have that phenomenon in Iran." n nI am quite certain they don't. Other than the broken bones buried under the boulders, there are no gays or lesbians (or anything else) in Iran. And Barney Frank's life would end long before anyone ever considered that he might be a Jew, they hate gays that much over there. n nYou'd think that Barney Frank, gay activist that he is, would kinda know that. You'd think that regardless of his position on Israel, he'd have issues with Iran over the "exterminate homosexuality" thing — if he is going to freak out about some low-level Republican staffer calling him "Barney F*g". which he did a few years back, he would at least be a tad concerned about Ahmadinejad getting nukes. n nForget nuking Israel, I wouldn't put it past these folk to nuke San Francisco during "Gay Pride" week. nAnd just like we and the Soviets did during the Cold War, they would do it through some proxy so that we really can't retaliate against Iran itself for it. Reality is that your enemy's enemy is inherently your friend, and I don't understand why gay activists like Barney aren't inherent supporters of Israel in that they share a common foe that wants to kill them even more than they want to kill the Jews. n nSometimes I think they have forgotten that folk wearing pink triangles went to the death camps too…