So now it’s clear that the agreement signed with Iran last week isn’t really an agreement, and anyway the ‘moderate’ Iranian president doesn’t intend to stop enriching uranium or dismantle any of his nuclear facilities (see also here).
The only aspect that seems to be a good bet is the weakening of sanctions.
The interim deal, when it is implemented — even the ‘interim period’ has yet to begin because of ‘technical’ issues — will provide some degree of sanctions relief to Iran, worth between $7 and $40 billion, depending on whom you believe. For their part, the US and Europeans will get an excuse to prevent Israel from interfering with Iran’s nuclearization, an important part of the overall obeisance they have chosen to pay to Iran, the terrorist superpower.
This follows other anti-Israel actions such as forcing Israel to apologize to Turkey for the Mavi Marmara affair, pressuring Israel to supply the Hamas regime, leaking confidential information about Israeli military actions to interdict Syrian weapons sent to Hizballah, as well as supporting a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt.
For its next act, the Obama Administration plans to tighten the screws on Israel to withdraw from Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. There is absolutely no American interest furthered by this, unless you consider hurting Israel a goal of American policy (as Caroline Glick does).
My regular readers know that my wife and I are moving to Israel in September. I don’t call it ‘aliyah’ because we already lived in Israel for almost a decade in the 1980s. One practical reason to move is that most of my children and grandchildren are there. If I were a spiritual person, I would talk about the benefits accruing to the Jewish soul from living in eretz yisrael. If I were younger I might be looking forward to army service. But recently one other reason has become more and more important:
I am infuriated by and ashamed by what my country — the United States of America — is trying to do to the homeland of my people, the state of Israel. I was born and grew up here, and I have always felt at home, even when I disagreed with US policy. The US was on the right side in WWII and in the Cold War, it finally extirpated the vestiges of slavery from its legal codes and to a great extent from its culture, and it was responsible for more technological innovation than the rest of the world combined.
There were missteps, wrong decisions, incompetence, even evil done from good (and sometimes not so good) intentions. There is justice in many of the the complaints of both the Left and the Right — although I emphatically reject the contention of the extreme Left that this country is the primary force of evil in the world. What great nation can claim moral perfection? The British? The Japanese? The Chinese? The Germans? The Arabs? The French?
But in the words of Aaron David Miller, “Obama really is different”. For the first time, really, the US has adopted an anti-Jewish policy. Yes, I am saying this despite the fact that American Jews overwhelmingly supported Obama — and probably still do.
I am quite sure that the officials who have time and again leaked statements impugning the loyalty of pro-Israel American Jews who oppose their policies would respond with some form of “some of my best friends are Jewish.” But of course that isn’t the point: a policy to end the first Jewish sovereign state established after 2000 years of oppression is profoundly anti-Jewish. Even Roosevelt’s polite refusal to take any action to mitigate the Holocaust does not compare.
I don’t accept the excuse that the administration believes that it can prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons with a policy of appeasement. I don’t accept that the administration believes that the PLO state it wants to create will exist peacefully alongside the Jewish state. I believe that administration policy is deliberate and that the desired goal is the end of the Jewish state.
It’s not just incompetence and lack of experience. Barack Obama is a product of Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi. He has chosen advisers and appointed officials who share his admiration for Islam and his antipathy for a sovereign Jewish state. Despite his protestations of support for Israel, his actions have been the reverse.
Yes, Obama and his crowd are “different.” And I would prefer to have as little as possible to do with them.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Obama Administration
In spirit, I’m right with you, Vic. I only wish that my personal circumstances were not such an obstacle to my making aliyah.
I was going to make this comment on your last article, concerning the goals of current U.S. policy, but I’ll make it here.
I agreed with your analysis 100%, except for one caveat, that you at least hint at here yourself.
There is no “pragmatic” side to Obama’s policies towards Israel. There is a rationalization of his ideological motivations that is reprsented to the public as “pragmatic”, but it is anything but, in objective terms.
Israel is the economic and military crown jewel of the region. Even beyond the ideological commonality between two liberal democracies, there is no other single power in the region that compares to Israel in terms of technological/economic dynamism, and military capability.
This idea that Shiite Islamism is a “strong horse” is only true so far as we, the U.S., make it so with our policies of appeasement. We could, if we chose, squash them like bugs. With Israel’s help, it would be all the easier.
Instead, under Obama, we are choosing to force the only known nuclear power in the region into a corner. This is actually very dangerous from the point of view of objective U.S. interests. I can’t see this ending well, not at all.
I can understand why Jews supported Obama in ’08. I disagreed with it then, argued aganist it then, but I at least understood it. I cannot fathom Jewish American support for Obama in ’12. In fact, based on my own anecdotal evidence, I don’t think it was nearly as great as reported.
I knew many Jews who supported Obama in ’08, who voted for Romney in ’12. Yes, I knew some two-time Obama voters in the Jewish community here, but they were relatively rare.
It has been recently reported that the employment figures leading up to the election were “cooked” to make the economy look better than it was at that time. If government statistics can be corrupted in that fashion, why not Jewish support for Obama?
After Obama’s speech to the Foreign Service here in May of ’11 – the one he delivered while Netanyahu was en route here – polls showed that Jewish support for Obama plunged. I can tell you all that Jews I knew here – no matter whom they voted for in ’08 – were furious with him. His support among U.S. Jews hovered around the 50% or less range for months and months…and magically “recovered” just before the election. What did he do that would explain this? I can’t think of anything.
Less than two months before the election, I attended an annual “campaign” fundraising event for my local federation. The powers that be in our local community got some speaker who had worked for the Clinton White House as guest speaker. He was supposed to be “nonpartisan”, but he was a thinly-veiled shill for Obama. He was grilled mercilessly by the audience about Obama’s policies towards Israel. I would have participated in said grilling, but my antipathy for Obama was well known in our local community, and he simply wouldn’t call on me when I tried to question him. I believe our local liberal democrat s***head “leadership” instructed him not to call on me. This was obvious to all present, and some complained on my behalf afterwards; the leadership went out of their way to deny this to me later, but I did not accept their denial.
Obama needed at least the appearance of Jewish support, not so much to win the election, but rather, to use this as a club with which to beat Netanyahu over the head. He needed to be able to say to Netanyahu, “See, the Jews in America support me, which means they support my policies. Expect no help from them. Why don’t you just cooperate with what I want you to do?”
Jewish support for Obama – or the appearance of the same – would have another impact Obama wanted, not related to the election. It would reduce Gentile support for Israel…after all, many would reason, if the Jews supported Obama, obviously THEY didn’t care about Israel, so why should anyone else? I’ve run into this attitude face-to-face.
So, from whence came these figures of 68-70% Jewish support for Obama in ’12? People like my Jewish community leadership who, in this instance, did NOT represent their community? From people like David Axelrod?
At any rate, even if the figures quoted for Jewish support for Obama in ’12 are true, I don’t know how much difference it made in terms of the outcome of the election. I believe the election was rigged in any event. However, a united Jewish front against Obama here in the U.S. would have, at the very least, made the election that much harder to rig, particularly in swing states with large Jewish populations such as Ohio and Florida.
None of us know yet if Obama’s re-election will translate into a mortal blow for the Jewish state of Israel. If this turns out to be the case, it will not lead me to question the existence of our G-d, however. What it will do is serve to me as the proof that we could have stopped him in ’12, and that this terrible outcome will represent our collective punishment for having allowed his re-election to happen. If we really could not have stopped him, then I will expect that he will be foiled, and that Israel will prevail.
Stout Hearts, everyone.
I am sorry to say that I give more credibility to your major accusation than I ever did before. In the past I would have regarded what you say as somewhat ridiculous. After all security cooperation between Israel and the United States is said by Israelis to be closer than ever before. After all the U.S. has helped Israel develop systems like Iron Dome which have made a difference in its struggle against the Arabs.
But I do believe that anyone who looks clearly at the Palestinians and has Israel’s interests at heart could not possibly be pushing for Israel to hand over territory to them. The Palestinian aim is clearly nothing less than destruction of Israel. So what can the U.S. hope to achieve by pushing for a deal which will possibly be disastrous for Israel?
I also now believe Obama has no real intention of stopping Iran from going nuclear. In effect he has already allowed them to go nuclear.
So I would give more credibility to the idea that he does seek our destruction. But not absolute credibility. For as I have said before the loss of Israel would be perceived as a major failure for the U.S. Obama could only be damaging himself and the U.S. in moving towards such an outcome.
So I stick with my thesis which is that he and his Administration are incompetent. They are foolish and cowardly more than they are malicious. Perhaps I am wrong, and perhaps it does not really so much matter.
The real point is that they are endangering Israel, and harming U.S. interests.