Chickensh*t

 

That quaint kid's playground epithet is the money quote from an article entitled "The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here," posted by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic.

It's what Goldberg reports that an anonymous senior Obama administration official called Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in a conversation Goldberg had with him. And in the article, Goldberg also mentions that President Obama "in interviews with me, has alluded to Netanyahu’s lack of political courage."

Now, for all that Jeffrey Goldberg has consistently been a fairly servile apologist for the president and the Obama Administration when it comes to Israel, he's not entirely wrong that Netanyahu has been guilty of a lack of courage in some instances. But that lack of courage is from an entirely different direction than Goldberg supposes.

Contrary to the tile of Jeffrey Goldberg's piece, the crisis in US-Israel relations started from the moment Barack Hussein Obama was elected president. Where Netanyahu and certain other Israeli leaders have exhibited a lack of courage is in trying desperately to deny and fend it off, and make believe it wasn't happening.

Barack Obama started his presidency by stating openly (once he was safely elected) that he wanted to create daylight between the U.S. and Israel, and he has been doing so ever since.

Is Jeffrey Goldberg suffering from amnesia? Do we really need to revisit the climate that's been created between the US and Israel since Barack Obama took over as president?  His repudiation of the agreements made with Israel by President Bush  that convinced Israeli PM Ariel Sharon to go ahead with the Gaza disengagement, claiming they never existed? His call for Israel to re-divide Jerusalem and retreat to indefensible borders? His telling Iran that Israel was on its own in the event of any hostilities? His insisting that Israel has no right to Jewish religious sites? His repeated statements that the Palestinians need not recognize Israel as a Jewish State and his continued funding of the Palestinian Authority in spite of their continued support and incitement for terrorism against Israeli civilians? His instituting what amounted to a de facto arms embargo for six months during the early part of his first term? His approval and funding of the new Hamas/Fatah entity which includes a genocidal terrorist group? The list could go on for quite some time.

Would any other sovereign nation put up with constant temper tantrums from a foreign government over building homes in its own capital? With pressure to release convicted murderers from its jails as a 'gesture for peace?' With mysterious holdups for bureaucratic 'review' of badly needed military supplies in the middle of a war? With deliberately insulting treatment of its elected leader by the president of what was supposed to be a closely allied government?

While Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have sometimes made statements that have revealed a lack of discretion,it's been in reaction to a long climate of outright hostility from the White House that makes even former President Carter's tenure look benign by comparison. Jeffrey Goldberg might wish to forget it, but it was the overt actions and attitude from this president and his administration towards Israel and Netanyahu that came first and poisoned the well.

The Israelis never figured on a president getting elected in America who had an animus towards Israel, and their futile attempts to muddle through and somehow make the relationship work only made President Obama more insistent, unreasonable and demanding.

And speaking of political courage, let's take a good look at what gave Barack Obama the license to act out this way towards Israel. It was America's Jews on the Left - like Jeffrey Goldberg.
Remember this,from back in 2008? (courtesy of Omri Ceren):

So, all you rumor-mongering, fever-headed Jewish conspiracists: Support McCain, if you want, and there are credible reasons for doing so, but stop smearing Obama in the face of overwhelming evidence that the man is a great friend of Jews and of Israel. After a point, it becomes obvious that what you fear is not Israel's destruction, but the presence of an African-American in the White House. And that's disgusting.

Obama's background and his feelings about Israel were obvious to anyone whom bothered to look at him honestly. President Barack Obama has had close associations with Israel haters and in some cases open anti-semites his entire life. Frank Marshall Davis, Edward Said, Rashid al-Khalidi, Khalid al-Mansour, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Al Sharpton and others like them all figure or have figured prominently in his background.

So how did this all slip by?

What happened is that many on the Left and those in media simply didn't want to know, especially Jews. They made a clear decision that voting Democrat and embracing their Leftist politics meant more to them than supporting their brothers and sisters in Israel. It was this hideous betrayal that enabled President Obama to act out and make support for Israel as an ally a partisan issue once he was elected. A significant number of American Jews voted Democrat in 2008 and found solace in candidate Obama telling them what they wanted to hear, in political groups the George Soros financed J-Street,and the NJDC, and in the bogus mantra of 'the two state solution'. It enabled President Obama to neuter AIPAC, as well as other Jewish groups. With a few honorable exceptions, they all fell in line with the New Order. And even after they had ample evidence of President Obama's attitude towards Israel during his first term, most of them voted for him again.

And this backing of Obama and his agenda led,in case no one's noticed, not only to the increased intransigence of Abbas and Fatah but to the increased hostility towards Jews and Israel in places like the EU and and a rising climate of Jew hatred in places like university campuses, again with some rare exceptions. The backing of the majority of America's Jews for Obama and their tolerance for his policies was and is the protective cover and the impetus for all of it.

And it's ironic that Goldberg himself, whom I'm sure knows this as well as I do is still drinking the same Kool-Ade. Read this from his article today:


Unlike the U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, I don’t have any hope for the immediate creation of a Palestinian state (it could be dangerous, at this chaotic moment in Middle East history, when the Arab-state system is in partial collapse, to create an Arab state on the West Bank that could easily succumb to extremism), but I would also like to see Israel foster conditions on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem that would allow for the eventual birth of such a state. This is what the Obama administration wants (and also what Europe wants, and also, by the way, what many Israelis and American Jews want), and this issue sits at the core of the disagreement between Washington and Jerusalem.

I'm sure that in the rarefied bubble Jeffrey Goldberg lives in, there are plenty of Jews who have no problem with creating Jewish refugees, redividing Jerusalem again and making it Jew-free 'for peace'. But hardly any Israelis do, now that they've seen up close what that means. Fully 76% of them,more than three out of four would oppose any kind of Palestinian state that would redivide Jerusalem and put half of it under the control of Hamas/Fatah.

What 'conditions' does Jeffrey Goldberg expect Israel to foster? Stop building in Jerusalem while the Arabs continue to build illegally and make East Jerusalem into their de facto capital? Stop Jews from living there because they're Jews? Ignore the current terrorist attacks and the intifada in Jerusalem incited and ordered by Abbas and Hamas, something that was planned by them a year ago and was just awaiting the proper excuse to be launched? Ignore Abbas's alliance with a genocidal terrorist group?

Actually, what the Jeffrey Goldbergs want is a lot simpler. They want Israel to bend over, do whatever President Obama and John Kerry tell Israel to do and stop embarrassing them.

And they think Bibi Netanyahu 'lacks political courage?'

It is highly possible President Obama will have the U.S. abstain from Mahmoud Abbas's attempt to push through a UN Security Council resolution gifting Hamas/Fatah all of Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem to create 'Palestine' on the pre '67 lines. If that happens and it passes, or if the president seeks to impose his own, similar diktat on Israel, Israel will simply refuse to comply, since they can't without committing national suicide. The response from the usual suspects is easy to predict. How dare Israel defy the UN diktat to create half a million Jewish refugees, redivide Jerusalem and to give Abbas and Hamas the ability to turn Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem into attack platforms like Gaza! How dare they defy President Obama! What an ungrateful ally!

At that point, unless congress intervenes in some fashion, U.S. military sales to Israel could very likely be cut off or 'suspended' by executive order and favorable trade treaties revoked.

If that's how it goes down, President Obama will then have achieved his goal of distancing America from Israel. And those of America's Jews who have been so eager to support Barack Obama's hostile agenda on Israel or simply keep quiet about it may just find out what a really bad idea that was, both for America and for them personally.

That story has already been played out before elsewhere. Just ask the Jews of England, France and elsewhere in Western Europe whether it was Israeli institutions being targeted or Jewish ones when Israel was recently defending its citizens from Hamas and see what they tell you.

The Book of Esther, a bit of scripture some Jews may be familiar with is another example.

As Mordecai reminded her when Esther was tempted to go with the flow and look the other way where her fellow Jews were concerned..If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s  family will perish.

There's a reason the Book of Esther is read every Purim for all Jews to hear and remember. The Goldbergs of the world ought to do some serious thinking about that.