From Richard Baehr’s Israel-Letter:
How bad will it get for Israel? Very bad.
Four commentaries below from Caroline Glick, Victor Davis Hanson, Melanie Phillips and Charles Krauthammer explain why. We are headed, I think, for the most serious breach in US Israel relations in history.
President Obama has legitimized the left wing Jewish “peace” camp”- groups like J-Street, the Israel Policy Forum, and Brit Tsedek, that want pressure on Israel, and conflict between Israel and the US. The Jewish left believes Israel is in the wrong, and so does Obama. Of course, many on the Jewish left couldn’t care less about Israel. But those on the Jewish left who do care (and are negative about Israel) will be cheerleading when Obama starts publicly pressuring Israel, and this will make it easier for the rest of Obama’s many millions of supporters to do the same.
Obama threatened Chrysler bondholders that he would use his bully pulpit to humiliate them if they did not buy into his plan which took the bondholders money and gave it to the UAW. It is a lesson for what is going to happen here.
For some time, it could have been argued that the two parties differed by degree when it came to Israel. No more. Now the differences are stark, especially as represented by the President versus Republicans in Congress. There are Israel supporters in the Senate and House who are Democrats. Will they take on a very popular President of their own Party on this issue? I can name a few who will be there, but I am not sure how many will answer the call. I think some will back Obama and give him even greater room to hammer Netanyahu.
As if the President has not had enough Muslim outreach for 4 months, he will give another talk to the Muslim world from Egypt on June 6. Then he is going on to Buchenwald. Makes sense. I am sure you can draw the connection for modern times. Obama’s outreach partners he will speak to from Cairo, by and large want Jews in graves. Obama’s policies will make it more likely they will get their wish fulfilled by endangering Israel’s security. Chatting with Iran while they complete their nuclear program, and sacrificing Israel’s security to create a Palestinian state are both very bad ideas and create a serious danger for Israel from an American government.
Obama’s Green Light to Attack Iran
By Caroline Glick
Excerpt:
Arctic winds are blowing into Jerusalem from Washington these days. As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s May 18 visit to Washington fast approaches, the Obama administration is ratcheting up its anti-Israel rhetoric and working feverishly to force Israel into a corner.
The Wages of Moral Equivalence
By Victor David Hanson
Excerpt:
Once U.S. foreign policy is based on moral equivalence — that a Western democratic state is about the same as an undemocratic, radical authoritarian entity that embraces terrorism as a tool of state policy — then anything is possible, from calling for Israeli nuclear disarmament as part of an Iranian deal, to pretending that a Hamas ten-year truce is something other than a decade of chest-thumping before the final assault.
Given the fact that the vast majority of American Jews voted for Obama — despite clear indications that he would embrace radical changes in U.S. policy toward Israel — the politics of what is to come will be as fascinating as they will be tragic.
Obama Prepares to Throw Israel Under the Bus
By Melanie Phillips
Excerpt:
None of this, however, should come as the slightest surprise to anyone who paid any attention to Obama’s background, associations and friendships before he became President and to the cabal of Israel-bashers, appeasers and Jew-haters he appointed to his administration, with a few useful idiots thrown in for plausible deniability.
Almost eighty per cent of American Jews voted for Obama despite the clear and present danger he posed to Israel. They did so because their liberal self-image was and is more important to them than the Jewish state whose existence and security cannot be allowed to jeopardise their standing with America’s elite.
But the ordinary American people are a different matter. They do value and support Israel. They do understand that if Israel is thrown under that bus, the west is next. And it is they to whom Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu must now appeal, over the heads of the politicians and the media and America’s Jews and everyone else. He must tell the American people the terrible truth, that America is now run by a man who is intent on sacrificing Israel for a reckless and amoral political strategy which will put America and the rest of the free world at risk.
The Hamas Peace Gambit
By Charles Krauthammer
Excerpt:
Netanyahu is reluctant to agree to a Palestinian state before he knows what kind of state it will be. That elementary prudence should be shared by anyone who’s been sentient the last three years. The Palestinians already have a state, an independent territory with not an Israeli settler or soldier living on it. It’s called Gaza. And what is it? A terror base, Islamist in nature, Iranian-allied, militant and aggressive, that has fired more than 10,000 rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians.
If this is what a West Bank state is going to be, it would be madness for Israel or America or Jordan or Egypt or any other moderate Arab country to accept such a two-state solution. Which is why Netanyahu insists that the Palestinian Authority first build institutions — social, economic and military — to anchor a state that could actually carry out its responsibilities to keep the peace.
While I think Richard is right that American Jews on the left don’t really care about Israel, I think many Jews who do care and voted for Obama are going to realize that by doing so they too threw Israel under the bus.
BEAR TO THE RIGHT 