In the aftermath of the Gaza flotilla fiasco, the air is thick with nonsense. Chief among the instant myths is that Israel has created a dilemma for President Obama.
Actually, it’s the other way around.
Obama’s weakness has led to more problems
The president’s appeasement policies helped to create the incident. Israel took the bait, but the trap was set in Washington.
Weakness always begets aggression, and, like clockwork, Obama’s repeated signals that he is weakening America’s commitment to Israel are emboldening the Jewish state’s enemies. From Syria to Iran to Lebanon, from Hezbollah to Hamas and the PLO, the wolves smell blood and are trying to gauge whether they can get close enough for the kill.
And whether the United States will stop them. That they even dare hope we won’t reflects the danger of Obama’s demented decisions.
Read More: By Michael Goodwin, New York Post
Tags: Barack Obama, Israel, Middle East, PalestineIn a rare public expression of concern, Meir Dagan, head of Israel’s Mossad external security service, warned Tuesday, June 1, that the progressive decline of American strength over the past decade and the perception of the Obama administration as "soft on military options for solving disputes" have cut deep into Israel’s military and diplomatic maneuverability and made it fair game for its enemies. This is reported by debkafile’s intelligence and political sources.
the head of Israel’s external security service
Dagan presented the Knesset foreign affairs and security committee with this evaluation 24 hours after Israeli Navy boarding parties prevented vessels sailing the Mediterranean from achieving their object of breaking the Gaza blockade. As the UN Security Council’s condemned the loss of life in that raid, the Mossad chief said Barack Obama’s first year as president was a period of "devaluation" for "Israeli and American strategic assets."
Dagan’s uncharacteristic bluntness was a measure of the anxiety gripping Israel’s security leaders over the slump in US-Israel relations.
He timed his cutting observations for the day Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was to have held talks in White House with President Obama. Although that meeting was cancelled and Netanyahu cut short his trip to return home and deal with the crisis over the flotilla incident, the Mossad Director decided that what he had to say was important enough to be said and aired without delay.
Read More: DEBKAfile
Tags: concerned about Obama weakness, Israel, Mossad, WorriedIf you close your eyes and listen to Zarein Ahmedzay, the jihadist convicted Friday for his role in unleashing a bomb in the New York City subway system on the anniversary of the 9/11 Islamic jihad attacks on America, you would here disturbing echoes of the policy of Barack Obama and his dhimmi administration: “I strongly urge the American people to stop supporting the war against Islam. And this will be in their own interest. … The real enemy of this country are the ones destroying the country from within … I believe it’s a special group, Zionist Jews, who want a permanent shadow government.” Obama hasn’t spoken about “Zionist Jews,” but the underlying sentiments are similar.
This guy and Obama share views on Israel
Ahmedzay’s narrative reflects Obama’s policy on Islamic jihad. He urges America to stop defending herself against the global jihad. Like Obama and his silly Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Obama suggests that fighting jihad will only…create jihad. And as for all the jihadi attacks before Iraq and Afghanistan operations, well…that’s irrelevant, an inconvenient truth. The left never lets logic and evidence get in the way of its anti-American narrative.
The day this New York subway jihad bomb plot was foiled, Obama was in New York addressing the United Nations. His speech was about the greatest threat facing mankind today: global warming. I kid you not. He said on that occasion, “We are determined to act. And we will meet our responsibility to future generations.” He said that a failure to address the threat could lead to an “irreversible catastrophe.” Time, he said, is “running out,” but “we can reverse” the problem. “If things go business-as-usual, we will not live; we will die,” he said. “Our country will not exist.” He told us that it wouldn’t be easy, but “I am here today to say that difficulty is no excuse for complacency. Unease is no excuse for inaction.”
All that would have been true if he had been referring to the jihad against the United States. But his only response to that is to give the jihadis whatever they want.
Read More: By Pamela Geller, American Thinker
Tags: Barack Obama, Israel, Jews, TerroristsPresident Obama is holding one of the biggest global summits ever on U.S. soil starting Monday, but for all the hoopla, the event will be missing America’s strongest allies.
As remarkable as it is, the fact that neither British Prime Minister Gordon Brown nor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are attending President Obama’s nuclear security summit in Washington Monday and Tuesday is not altogether surprising.
Why should they come when Obama is going to disrespect them anyways
Relations with both countries — Israel in particular — have grown strained under Obama. Combined with Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s recent defiance of the administration, questions are growing about the president’s ability to maintain important relationships.
“It is a curious state of affairs when relations with our major democratic allies are all wobbly at once,” said Michael Green, a former foreign policy adviser to President George W. Bush, who also listed Japan and South Korea as traditional allies whose relationships with the U.S. have frayed under Obama.
“And one has to ask why righting these key alliances has not received more attention,” he said.
Read More: By Jon Ward – The Daily Caller
Tags: Alienating friends, allies, Barack Obama, Brittain, Israel, nuclear summitWhat is it like to be a foreign ally of Barack Obama’s America?
If you’re a Brit, your head is spinning. It’s not just the personal slights to Prime Minister Gordon Brown — the ridiculous 25-DVD gift, the five refusals before Brown was granted a one-on-one with The One.
Obama is abandoning our allies
Nor is it just the symbolism of Obama returning the Churchill bust that was in the Oval Office. Query: If it absolutely had to be out of Obama’s sight, could it not have been housed somewhere else on U.S. soil rather than ostentatiously repatriated?
Perhaps it was the State Department official who last year denied there even was a special relationship between the U.S. and Britain, a relationship cultivated by every U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt.
And then there was Hillary Clinton’s astonishing, nearly unreported (in the U.S.) performance in Argentina last month. She called for Britain to negotiate with Argentina over the Falklands.
For those who know no history — or who believe it began on Jan. 20, 2009 — and therefore don’t know why this was an out-of-the-blue slap at Britain, here’s the back story:
Read More: By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, IBD
Tags: Barack Obama, England, IsraelPresident Barack Obama’s relations with the Israeli government have hit a new low, but the tensions on display this week between him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be reviving another presidential project: Obama’s quest to improve America’s image in the Arab and Muslim world.
Obama raised high expectations among Arab leaders and citizens with his promise of dramatic change from the days of George W. Bush and high-profile gestures in the first days of his administration, but the administration’s awkward retreat last year from an initial demand of a total Israeli freeze on settlements dissipated much of that goodwill.
Obama is gambling with Israel’s very existence
Now, Obama’s return to the question of Israel’s continuing construction in East Jerusalem has signaled an acceptance of some Arab criticism of Israel. At the same time, Obama’s willingness to cross swords with the Israelis comes at a domestic political cost: The pro-Israel group AIPAC released a letter Friday with the signatures of three-quarters of the members of the House, pressing the administration to retreat from public confrontation.
The question facing Obama is whether he will be able to turn a perception of increased “evenhandedness” into an Arab engagement in the peace process that the administration sought, but did not get, last year.
Read More: By BEN SMITH, Politico
Tags: Barack Obama, Israel, Mideast gambleWhat a difference a couple of years make.
Back in early 2008, when both Obama and Hillary Clinton were competing for the Democratic presidential nomination, they courted Jewish voters big time at AIPAC’s annual policy conference.
Their 2008 comments and pledges of all-out support of Israel now ring quite hollow in light of their unrelenting pressures and criticisms of that nation.
Let’s start with Obama. In his AIPAC address two years ago, he sought to allay concerns and reservations among Israel-supporters about how he would deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if he became president. To win over the doubters, Obama declared that as far as he was concerned, Jerusalem must remain Israel’s “undivided” capital. Big cheers and sighs of relief from his AIPAC audience.
…Except that almost as soon as he left the conference hall, Obama’s campaign put out a correction that he hadn’t meant to say what he did say and that Jerusalem’s fate would still have to be negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians. By declaring that the city should remain “undivided,” Obama simply meant that it wouldn’t be marred by the kind of ugly barriers that sliced through Jerusalem before 1967.
For many Israel-supporters, Obama’s lightning-quick turnabout marked a turning point — from bending over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt that his Israel-hating pastor, the Rev. Wright, really hadn’t had any influence on his thinking, to viewing him as a politician whose support of Israel was definitely in the very doubtful column. This is especially true since in the run-up to the 2008 campaign, Obama gladly accepted the national backing of his church — the United Church of Christ — without ever challenging its fierce anti-Israel stance. With Obama, the past was prelude.
Read More: By Leo Rennert, American Thinker
Tags: allies, Barack Obama, Israel, Lies, undivided JerusalemU.S.-Israeli relations have hit a 35-year low over a contentious east Jerusalem building project that threatens to derail peacemaking efforts with the Palestinians, Israel’s envoy to Washington was quoted as saying Monday.
Ambassador Michael Oren’s remarks clashed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assurances that the political turmoil resulting from the settlement announcement, which the Obama administration slammed as "an insult," was under control.
It doesn’t look like Biden is helping the relationship much…
"Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975 … a crisis of historic proportions," the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper quoted Oren as saying to Israeli diplomats in a phone briefing over the weekend.
Israeli officials said that the U.S. is pressing the Jewish nation to scrap the east Jerusalem building project.
Competing Israeli and Palestinian claims to east Jerusalem were feeding tensions in the holy city, where Arabs and Jews maintain an uneasy coexistence and sometimes clash. Police were out in large numbers in the volatile Old City in expectation of renewed clashes.
Read More: FOXNews
Tags: Israel, Joe Biden, Middle East, PalestiniansThe White House has not released any official photos of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting this week with President Obama – just one of several signs indicating a rift between the two leaders.
Netanyahu arrived in the U.S. last weekend to address a convention of Jewish leaders. The prime minister’s office had for weeks attempted to schedule a meeting with Obama, but no meeting was officially confirmed until Netanyahu was already on a plane on his way to Washington, sources in Netanyahu’s office said.
Obama would not be photographed with Netanyahu
The only photos available to the media so far have been pictures of Netanyahu entering and exiting the White House. Any official photos taken of Obama and Netanyahu have not been released.
Neither Netanyahu nor Obama’s team had scheduled any press conferences after the meeting, contrary to usual custom. Sources close to Netanyahu told WND the Israeli team canceled media briefings at the request of the U.S. administration.
Read More: By Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily
Tags: Barack Obama, Israel, NetanyahuIranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the US to choose between Israel and Iran on Tuesday night, according to Iranian state media.
Speaking in Istanbul at the 25th Session of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC) of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Iranian president said that it was up to US President Barack Obama to realize his motto of "change".
Will Obama side with the holocaust denier?
"The support of both Israel and Iran can’t go hand in hand," he was quoted as saying by IRNA. "No change is made unless great choices are made.
"We would welcome the changes, and wait for big and correct decisions to be made… We will clasp any hand that is extended sincerely toward us, but changes should be made in practice."
Read More: By Jerusalem Post
Tags: Barack Obama, Iran, Israel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Middle East
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