Israel's fear and loathing of Obama

[ensho]

https://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidFTNEWSPLUS_CB20100427_26


Israel's alarm at the deterioration in its relations with the US is palpable. In Jerusalem recently, even a liberal commentator told me: "Barack Obama is a disaster for Israel. I don't think the general public realise just how much of a disaster he is." Government officials are more careful - but only a bit. Danny Ayalon, the deputy Israeli foreign minister, says that it would be a "grave mistake" for America to present its own Middle East peace plan, an idea that the US president's people are known to be considering.

Listening to all this, I could not help thinking back to the early stages of the Northern Irish peace negotiations. In part, this is because some of the same cast of characters have moved from Belfast to Jerusalem. George Mitchell,

Mr Obama's envoy to the Middle East, played a crucial role as a go-between in Ulster. Tony Blair is also on the scene, this time installed in the American Colony hotel rather than Stormont castle.

But there is more to the parallel than familiar faces. The Israelis' furious reaction to the pressure they are under from the Obama administration is reminiscent of the British rage early in the Northern Irish peace process, when it became clear that our American allies were intent on "talking to the terrorists" of the Irish Republican Army. But, as it turned out, the Americans were right to insist that there was a peace deal to be made with the IRA. They are right again on the Middle East peace process. There is still a deal to be had - and if Israel does not take it soon, the long-term survival of the Jewish state will be imperilled.

-snip-

Mr Obama is right to identify a halt to "settlement activity" as crucial.

Israelis have many theories about why Mr Obama is being so beastly to them. The wilder fringes of the Israeli right insist that the US president is an anti-semite - despite the fact that both his chief-of-staff and his top political adviser are Jewish. Even leftwing commentators muse that Mr Obama may be more instinctively sympathetic to the developing world than to the Jewish state.

But no special explanation should be needed for Mr Obama's insistence on a settlement freeze. Such a policy is in the interests of Israel as well as the Palestinians. Israelis may fear and even detest Mr Obama - but the American president is actually doing them a favour.
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[Ian David]

1. See also

After public rebuke in Biden visit, Israeli approval of Obama soars to 69%
Topic started by Yeahyeah on Mar-22-10 11:22 PM (15 replies)
Last modified by Turborama on Mar-23-10 07:46 AM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=4316282

Obama's Approval Rating Is 64 Percent, Among American Jews
Fri Oct-02-09 02:42 PM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8681932

American Jews back Obama on Israel
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=309705

[Jefferson23]

3. That's true, yet, Schumer was recently pandering to the right, and

apparently, it did not appease many of this group. I hope he drops the criticism of Obama for good. ( Video at the link )


Speakers at an extremist rally lash out at Jewish groups and Dem politicians, warn that cozying up to Obama would endanger Israel and imperil the settlement enterprise.
April 28, 2010 |

On April 25, over 1000 New York-area Jewish extremists gathered in midtown Manhattan to rally against the Barack Obama administration's call for a freeze on construction in occupied East Jerusalem and to demand unlimited rights to colonize the West Bank. With Obama and top White House officials engaged in a charm offensive to repair their relationship with mainstream American Jewish organizations, speakers at the rally lashed out at the Jewish groups and Democratic politicians, warning that cozying up to Obama would endanger Israel and imperil their cherished settlement enterprise.

Sen. Chuck Schumer and another major New York-area Jewish Democrat, Rep. Anthony Weiner, have scrambled to appease the extreme pro-settler elements railing against Obama. On the radio show of Nachum Segal, a right-wing Orthodox Jew popular among the demonstrators, Schumer called Obama's demands to stop the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem "counter-productive" and boasted about warning White House aides that he would "publicly blast" them if the President did not relent.



But Schumer's pandering appeared to be futile. At the rally, demonstrators waved placards reading, "Where's Schumer?" and complained to me that the senator's criticism of Obama was too little, too late.

Meanwhile, according to the New York Jewish Week, Weiner had begged organizers for a chance to speak at the rally but was rebuffed out of fear that he might put "some sort of Democratic 'spin' on the president's policies." Beth Galinsky, a rally organizer, claimed Weiner was waiting in a nearby car during the rally, hoping that his desperate pleas would provide him an opportunity to address the crowd.

While the Democratic congressman was shut out, the Republican Jewish Coalition was afforded a prominent role at the demonstration beside far-right groups like the Zionist Organization of America, Z Street, Americans for a Safe Israel, Christians United for Israel, and Manhigut Yehudit, an anti-democratic group that calls for theocratic rule over Israel.

Supporters of Manhigut leader and Likud politician Moshe Feiglin distributed fliers promoting Feiglin's upcoming campaign for prime minister of Israel. An open advocate of ethnic cleansing who has proposed depriving the Palestinians of drinking water, Feiglin recently called Vice President Biden "a diseased leper."

While the pro-settler elements rallied in Manhattan, their counterparts from the radical Kahanist movement in the Hebron-based settlement of Tel Rumeida rampaged through Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, inciting violent confrontations while announcing their intention to rid the area of its historical Arab presence.

Dov Hikind, a Democratic New York Assemblymember who represents Orthodox Jewish areas in Brooklyn, is a longtime supporter of Baruch Marzel, the settler leader who orchestrated the provocations in East Jerusalem. "These are people who love us and help us, they are real lovers of Israel," Marzel once said of Hikind and his allies. Hikind's role as a keynote speaker at the New York rally was one of many hints that the events in Manhattan and Jerusalem were closely coordinated.

The Manhattan rally took on a distinctively Tea Party-flavor. Besides issuing maximalist calls for the expulsion of the Palestinians, demonstrators assailed Obama as a secret Muslim with no legitimate right to serve as President of the United States. When I was identified by a particularly ornery rally participant as "the self-hating asshole Max Blumenthal," I decided it was time to make my exit.

However, as I walked down 44th Street towards the subway, an elderly man grabbed me and attempted to snatch my camera (I had seen the gun-toting Marzel use similar tactics on anti-settlement activists documenting his exploits in the West Bank). "You're not a Jew! Give me the film!" the man exclaimed. A mob of demonstrators suddenly formed and began advancing towards me. Luckily, two NYPD officers were nearby. They pried the man off me and gave me enough time to escape. I paced for two blocks until I reached Grand Central Station then disappeared into the crowd.


http://www.alternet.org/rights/146655/watch%3A_ultra_zionists_take_manhattan%2C_and_demand_the_holy_land

[sui generis]

2. I love it. Barack is a disaster, not Israel's public policy?

I AM dismayed - how much in denial the state of Israel is about their accountability for falling public sentiment.

Anyway, the only disaster in foreign and domestic policy is fundamental rigidity and dishonesty. If Israel is going to continue to pretend that it can be an independent sovereign state, then it needs to come to the foreign policy table prepared to lead constructively, and not dictate and then claim that anyone who doesn't agree is a "disaster".

Anyway, I'd like to probe this comment a bit more. What exactly, Danny Ayalon, did you mean to imply when you said that it would be a "grave mistake" to propose a Middle East peace plan that didn't align itself exclusively with Israel?

Does he mean Israel would do something to force the U.S. hand in support, such as starting a war and then running to the playground monitor to bail them out? Or do they simply mean blackmail and extortion? Because the alternative (alternative to "grave mistake") of proposing a broader peace plan is that it might actually be workable and earn some adherence from its stakeholders if it's not just a blind backing of existing Israeli public policy.

I really don't like vague threats or intimations on the foreign policy stage. It means that somebody THINKS they have a lever, whether they do or not, and THAT really could turn out to be a disaster.