DAYTONA BEACH SHORES, Fla. -- Last week Obama threw Israel under the panzer. This week, speaking before the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he tried, and I believe he failed, to walk that cat back.
No friend of Israel would, as Obama has now done twice, call for preemptive capitulation from Israel before opening negotiations with the Palestinians. No friend of Israel would gratuitously insult the Israeli Prime Minister immediately before meeting with him.
No friend of Israel would call into question America’s unrestricted commitment to Israel at a time when most of the Arab world is in a state of unpredictable flux and Israel’s negotiating partner has just allied itself with Israel’s principal terrorist enemy.
It is time for American Jewry to realize that Obama is not a reliable friend or a dependable global leader, a truth which the United Kingdom, Poland and NATO are coming to terms with. If not checked, Obama’s domestic policies will destroy both the dollar and the American economy. His foreign policies will weaken the US-Israel relationship and put Israel at greater risk.
I hope that the Jewish citizens of the United States, who have contributed so much to our country, will turn away from this false friend and look to the Republican Party. In the GOP, they will find devotion to Israel’s secure existence as a Jewish state and an unswerving commitment to reduce our national debt and restore America’s greatness. In his recent second “outreach” speech to the Muslim world, President Obama repeated an earlier error. Once before, seeking to encourage negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he called for a prior Israeli concession – a freeze on settlements in the West Bank.
Such a freeze was among the goals which the Palestinians would have hoped to achieve from negotiations and, for precisely that reason, Israel cannot be asked to give away a major Palestinian objective before the negotiations begin. Why then did Obama suggest it? Last week Obama went even further. Using the language of UN Security Council Resolution 242 passed in the immediate wake of the 1967 war, Obama suggested that Israel should agree that the outcome of any peace settlement include a return to the 1967 borders minimally altered by certain “land swaps” to be agreed between the negotiating parties.
This ignores the multitudes of physical changes – so-called “facts on the ground” – which have taken place since 1967. It repeats the mistake he made with the settlement freeze. More importantly it conveniently overlooks the well-known fact that Israel’s 1967 frontiers are not and cannot be secure and defensible. Return of the Golan Heights would leave much of northern Israel exposed to rocket and artillery fire, as it was when the Heights were last in Syrian hands. A look at the ’67 borders shows that, at its narrowest point Israel is less than 10 miles wide.
This would leave Ben Gurion airport and Israel all the way to the coastline within mortar range, no doubt causing Jewish visitors to the Western Wall to pray that their country does not fall apart at its hinges. Return of the West Bank and much of Jerusalem would put important Jewish and Christian holy places in Islamic hands. Look up the degree of access to these sites enjoyed by non-Muslims before 1967 and imagine what would be the case in this day of heightened Islamic radicalism. Obama supposedly made his speech to encourage resumption of peace negotiations between Israel and Fatah, representing the Palestinians. Yet he must know that there will be no serious negotiations at this time – perhaps none at all.
First, Fatah has recently allied itself with its former rival, the terrorist group Hamas. The latter continues and amplifies its calls for the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of its Jewish population. Israel cannot and will not negotiate with any party which refuses even to accept Israel’s right to exist as a state. Second, much of the Arab world is in a state of political flux, often violent, and no one is able to say exactly where this will lead. Obama is indiscriminately cheering this process as a struggle for democracy but of course this is ludicrous. In the Islamic world the mob tends to be more radical and less realistic than its governments. Take Egypt for example. Since the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent signature of the Camp David Accords, Egypt’s military government has guaranteed Israel peace and stability on its western flank.
This removed the most dangerous of the Arab military threats to Israel and enabled the country to reduce its massive military expenditures and concentrate to a greater degree on the development of a prosperous civilian economy. Following the recent revolution the Egyptian military is still in charge but its domestic position is weakened, the Muslim Brotherhood is growing stronger and the country is already shifting toward a stance more in line with the rest of the Arab world. It was Egypt, after all, which helped broker the new alliance between Fatah and Hamas. Seeing this trend, the Israeli government will have to take measures to protect itself against a potentially more adversarial Egypt and these steps will be noticed and provoke an Arab response. Israel cannot be expected to negotiate a peace settlement until it can know the nature and intent of the states which will surround it.
Finally, Obama made his speech and his controversial suggestion immediately before the arrival in Washington of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. In the world of diplomacy, that is not how these things are done. Obama should have discussed his planned statement privately with the Israelis before making it public. Not only would this be courteous, particularly amongst close allies, but it would have given Netanyahu, who soon faces his own election campaign, time to prepare himself and his people before having to address this important issue before the international press. Such a deliberate departure from accepted diplomatic practice could only have been a conscious slight. Sad to say, this mistreatment of our closest ally in the Middle East, at a time when the policies of the Islamic states are increasingly influenced by the more radical among them, merely repeats Obama’s casual disregard for the concerns of other US allies. He insulted our longstanding ally Great Britain by returning their gift of a bust of Winston Churchill, the greatest Englishman of the 20th century. As a gift to the Queen, he gave copies of his speeches and CD’s which will not work in Europe. The White House has a skilled professional protocol office which keeps detailed records of past gifts to foreign leaders and which would have suggested appropriate gifts in this case. The slight had to have been deliberate.
On his upcoming visit to Europe, Obama will address the British Parliament from Westminster and doubtless use his private meetings to attempt to improve the relationship. He dissed our closest friend in east/central Europe – Poland – by reneging on President Bush’s plan to build anti-missile launching sites to protect against missiles which might be developed by Iran. Presumably this was done to assuage Russian concerns, even though the missiles planned for Poland would not have made even a tiny dent in Russia’s launch capacity. And he reached this decision over a year after Russia, via its invasion of Georgia and its efforts to become the dominant supplier of natural gas to Europe, had signaled its intent to resume its rivalry with the United States.
Poland has responded to this and to NATO’s poor performance in Libya by joining with the other east/central European nations of Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary to create a military alliance called the Visegrad Four. Obama will also visit Poland during his coming trip. His private reception may be less than wholly friendly. Albeit reluctantly, he agreed to help NATO prevent Qaddafi’s forces from overrunning the Libyan rebels. But he refused to exercise American leadership, pulling back and leaving a hesitant and divided NATO with an obscure mission, demonstrating its incapacity to defeat even a third-rate opponent. In the process he ordered the American military into a conflict involving no vital US national interests on the absurd ground of protecting human rights. In fact he contributed to an extended conflict in which thousands more will die while leaving our NATO allies twisting in the wind. This unending repetition of basic mistakes in the conduct of foreign affairs, most recently including his disregard for Israel’s interests and his mistreatment of its Prime Minister, should offer good reason for America’s Jewish citizens to reconsider their support for Obama.
I am not Jewish and it is certainly not for me to advise the Jewish community on matters of policy. I say only that the Republican Party has long recognized that Jews have made more and greater contributions to the United States in virtually every field of endeavor than any other minority. And the GOP recognizes that a strong secure Israel, enjoying the unquestioned support of the United States, is and must remain the foundation and bulwark of America’s position in the Middle East. I ask that you contrast the support which Israel received from the previous Administration with what we see from the Obama Administration.
If you conclude, as I do, that Israel cannot trust Barack Obama, if you fear, as I do, that Obama’s policies have put the economy of the United States at risk of collapse, then please look to the Republican Party and consider support for their candidates in 2012.