In fine Alinskyite tradition, Pres. Barack Obama is ready to say anything at any moment if it seems expedient. So it was that he spoke some months back of the “unbreakable bond of friendship” between the United States and Israel. The occasion was the Jewish state’s Independence Day. The proximate cause, however, was a backlash provoked by policies shot through with anti-Israeli animus — and none more so than President Obama’s obsession over the construction of Israeli housing, a subject on which the president is no less doctrinaire than his good friend Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO mouthpiece turned U.S. academic.
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Was the “unbreakable bond” bit a sweet nothing, or did Obama really mean what he said? The president’s skedaddle out of the country after the mammoth electoral drubbing his policies caused his party provides a good opportunity to judge.
Between defending the failed strategy of printing another trillion or so dollars to resuscitate the U.S. economy and fending off the resulting rebukes from G-20 leaders, Obama found time to blast Israel for building more housing. “This kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations.”
By “this kind of activity,” the president was referring to the construction of 1,345 housing units in the eastern section of Jerusalem. He was also drawing an equivalence between that city and Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Put aside the anomaly whose mention is also apparently “never helpful” — namely, that Palestinians simultaneously want Jews expelled from Palestinian territories while Arabs are permitted not merely to live in, but to “return” in droves to, Israel. There is also this inconvenient fact, left to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to break to the unbreakably friendly U.S. president: Jerusalem is not a “settlement” — it is the capital of Israel.
Sadly, there is nothing new in Obama’s amateurish inflation of Israeli construction from a sore point to a flash point in Israeli-Palestinian tensions. Nor is there novelty in his hectoring of Israel for insufficient indulgence of a “negotiating partner” that does not accept its right to exist. If there were nothing more, there’d be little point in recounting this story.
But there is a new wrinkle in Obama’s Israel-bashing: the setting. While the president’s post-election get-out-of-Dodge tour has included stops in New Delhi, Seoul, and Tokyo, he opted to zing the Zionist entity while touring Jakarta. This was no coincidence: By population, Indonesia is the world’s largest Islamic country, home to 200 million Muslims.
It is also Obama’s boyhood home. “Indonesia is a part of me,” the president gushed to a friendly crowd of university students, adopting the native tongue for emphasis. He went on to praise the country as a model of religious tolerance worthy of global emulation. The president explained that this is why he seeks for the United States and Indonesia “a deep and enduring partnership” — which surely must be better than an “unbreakable bond of friendship.” Such a relationship, Obama stressed, should be a natural for two nations “bound together by shared interests and shared values.”
I have a rather simple solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel is a tiny country. Jordan and Egypt, two "moderate" Arab countries are rather large by comparison. So if Egypt is truly concerned about plight of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip refugee camps, it can give land twice that size within it's own borders to the people in those camps. Israel then can have the area of the Gaza Strip as its own. Jordan could likewise give land twice the size of the West Bank to the people now living in the West Bank. Israel would then take over the West Bank. This would leave Israel with more defensible borders, and the people now in the Gaza Strip and West Bank with twice the land they have now, and an eternal debt of gratitude for the benevolent acts of the good people and leaders of Egypt and Jordan. The second part of this is that the Muslim world, including Indonesia, could band together to create a construction fund to cover the cost of beautiful new homes, hospitals, schools, etc, at no charge to the residents of those areas. With these new areas within the countries of Egypt and Jordan, there would be no barbed wire around them, no walls, and no Israeli checkpoints unless they went into Israel for work. Voila. Better living conditions, more space, and more freedom, all solved by the Muslim community and their bond of brotherhood. Nothing else is working, so it's time for a radical new proposal, and unless both Egypt and Israel, and in fact the whole Muslim world, is unwilling to help those poor people for whom they cry there is no reason this shouldn't work. There will be no need for the U.S. to contribute a dime to this because there will be such an outpouring of assistance from Muslims around the world to finance this solution to this problem.
Obama has more to say about the Israeli settlement policy than the Iraqi Islamic fundamentalist murder-of-Christians policy.
Is pointing that out an indicia of vicious American "Islamophobia"?
I have a rather simple solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel is a tiny country. Jordan and Egypt, two "moderate" Arab countries are rather large by comparison. So if Egypt is truly concerned about plight of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip refugee camps, it can give land twice that size within it's own borders to the people in those camps. Israel then can have the area of the Gaza Strip as its own. Jordan could likewise give land twice the size of the West Bank to the people now living in the West Bank. Israel would then take over the West Bank. This would leave Israel with more defensible borders, and the people now in the Gaza Strip and West Bank with twice the land they have now, and an eternal debt of gratitude for the benevolent acts of the good people and leaders of Egypt and Jordan. The second part of this is that the Muslim world, including Indonesia, could band together to create a construction fund to cover the cost of beautiful new homes, hospitals, schools, etc, at no charge to the residents of those areas. With these new areas within the countries of Egypt and Jordan, there would be no barbed wire around them, no walls, and no Israeli checkpoints unless they went into Israel for work. Voila. Better living conditions, more space, and more freedom, all solved by the Muslim community and their bond of brotherhood. Nothing else is working, so it's time for a radical new proposal, and unless both Egypt and Israel, and in fact the whole Muslim world, is unwilling to help those poor people for whom they cry there is no reason this shouldn't work. There will be no need for the U.S. to contribute a dime to this because there will be such an outpouring of assistance from Muslims around the world to finance this solution to this problem.
And the facade continues to crumble; like a sand castle at high tide.
I'm suprised he doesn't demand a one-child policy. When prepared, he's divisive. When unprepared, he's incompetent. The more he shows himself and talks, the bigger the portfolio against him gets. Full of chronological facts, eventually the most utopian US Jews and independent/moderate of people won't be able to defend him or those around him. "I won"....but until recently it was really difficult to hear the chorus reply "yeah, but we lost".
Israel is a country of little strategic importance. Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world and of significant strategic and economic importance to US.
Overall, some very good points. I have only one minor quibble, which is that East Jerusalem has never been recognized as part of Israeli territory by the UN. Sure, I despise the UN as much as anyone, but if you study the history of modern Israel the original proposal was to have the entire city of Jerusalem be UN-occupied. It was only when Arabs rejected this settlement plan that Israel wound up controlling West Jerusalem. So in theory, at least, new construction in East Jerusalem is problematic--at least if the US wishes to seek any "peace" agreement with the Palestinian Arabs.
All that being said, I think the President has handled the situation between Jews and Muslims rather poorly. Gee, what a surprise that he would be sympathetic to a particular side!
Are you saying that we need to support the evil intentions of any country or bloc we think of as strategically important? Good thing you weren't an American policy maker in the 1930's! This is not quite what America stands for.
Kingfisher, you have to know that Israel is important to us because they are the only non-Muslim, democratic goverment in the region. You couldn't be so dense as to brush that off in trade for a country that has lots of people - who are by and large impoverished and are governed by Sharia Law. Fourth largest country? Really.
Ok, is Israel is a democracy in the Middle East. How does that make them strategically important to The United States?
And yes, I can be so “dense” as to brush off a country of little strategic and economic value for a country of greater strategic and economic value. It’s called promoting the national interest of The United States of America.
An Israeli citizen would have no problem grasping this concept if the role were reversed, as Israel is nothing but viscously pragmatic in its statecraft. They would laugh at the irrationality of doing otherwise.
You are going to start right out of the gate with Neville Chamberlain? Really? I mean, normally it takes Victor Davis Hanson at least 800 words before he warms up to such a tired analogy. Wow, simple and lazy; your parents must be very proud of you.
Kingfisher, does the fact that Israel won ALL the wars against her (and our) populous enemies make them strategically important to The United States? In a fight, I'd rather have one solid friend watching my back than a dozen of inept scumbags. But a common type Anti-Semite will always find an excuse to view it differently.
Kingfisher 11/15/10 19:59 argues so cogently, with so many facts and so few ad hominems, that the rest of us should hang our heads in shame, or something. Or maybe not.
Kingfisher, of course, is tired of a very apt analogy, one that is highly inconvenient to those who regret our entry into WW2, and probably regret its outcome, too.
No, the fact Israel has won all the wars against her (though Hezbollah would beg to differ) does not make it of strategic importance to the US. Israel’s military is geared to its national defense, and to that end it does a fine job; but it is useless to the US for purposes of power projection and strategic logistics.
Further, nations do not have friends - they have interests. Anyone who has ever worked a day in US counterintelligence will tell you that Israel is no friend of the US.
But hey, way to shamelessly play the anti-Semite card!
Our entry into WWII worked out very well for us, the major powers of the day destroyed each other and the US emerged as the sole remaining industrialized power; this led to a pretty good run for us that lasted up until around now.
And nobody fought WWII to stop the Holocaust, it was not an issue in the decision making process; stop dumbing down and simplifying history to suit your agenda.
Israeli "Democracy": Arab citizens of Israel are barely represented in Knesset. Non -Zionist parties take up 11 seats out of the Knesset's 120; less then 10 percent of the parliament, as opposed to their electorate's 20 percent of the population.
A survey held in March found 56 percent of Jewish youths under 18 believe Arabs citizens should not be allowed to vote. Charges of treason are routinely hurled about both in the Knesset podium and in the parliamentary committees; a report by the Coalition against Racism in Israel found the current assembly of the Knesset to be the most racist in the parliament's history, with a record number of bills directly targeting Arab citizens of Israel.
