I've never considered President Barack Hussein Obama to be overly bright, but I've always credited him with the survival instincts of a cockroach and the ability to learn from his mistakes.
Two recent developments concerning Israel are a good example.
Having seen that bullying Israel overtly himself didn't play too well politically with Americans, he appears to have decided on a different tactic - getting others to do the job for him.
First, he had Israeli PM Netanyahu over to the White House for a smilin' photo-op where nothing of major substance was discussed or decided to try and give the appearance that his behavior towards Israel over the last year and a half was just a silly misunderstanding between friends, and Netanyahu played along because it benefited him in terms of domestic politics as well.
That out of the way, Obama began his new tactic - he simply found people that have a natural anti-Israel inclination anyway and got them to do the dirty work of pressuring Israel for him, backed by the same old threats behind the scenes.
The first one of these to surface out of the ooze was British PM David Cameron.
Shortly after meeting with Obama at the White House, Cameron traveled to Turkey as a guest of the Islamist Erdogan government and took the occasion to open up on Israel with both barrels. In harsh, undiplomatic language that surprised a good many people, Cameron publicly condemned Israel for the 'attack' on what he called the “humanitarian” flotilla to Gaza and referred the Gaza Strip as a “prison camp” with the clear implication that Israel was the warden.
Of course, that there was no 'attack' on the Gaza flotilla. Instead, there was simply a clearly announced attempt to prevent a group of ships from breaking a legitimate and legal blockade to a terrorist controlled state.
All of the ships except one agreed to sail into Israeli ports and have their supplies off loaded, checked and then shipped to Gaza...except for one,
the Mavi Marmara, where Turkish "activists" with links to the terrorist supporting IHH prepared an ambush for unsuspecting IDF soldiers who came aboard the ship armed with paintball guns.
And far from being a prison camp, Gaza's stores are fully stocked, and a
brand new shopping mall and a number of resorts have opened up and are doing a thriving business.
Cameron also shilled for Turkey to join the EU and announced "Turkey shares our determination to fight terrorism in all its forms, whether from al-Qaeda or from the PKK."
Apparently he doesn't consider Erdogan's support for the brutal Hamas regime or their Iranian overlords to be support for terrorism. What a surprise, eh?
Cameron's motivation in doing this is obvious. Aside from increasing Britain's commercial ties with Turkey, this was a way of ingratiating himself with Obama, and extricating the UK from the American public relations nightmare over British Petroleum's doings in the Gulf spill and the oil deal with Libya that resulted from the freeing of the
Lockerbie bomber. And it had the added bonus of appealing to some of Britain's Muslim voters and to Cameron's far Left coalition partners in the Liberal Party, most of whom are anti-Israel to the point of obsession.
Another example of Obama's latest tactic came out just today.
Israel had launched its own inquiry into the Gaza flotilla incident, with a commission including a retired Israeli Supreme Court justice and international participants. In spite of that Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the UN, had been insisting on putting together an anti-Israel witch hunt in the form of a UN 'independent investigative commission' designed to railroad Israel over the matter.
Just last week, Moon was saying that the UN's effort at forming a commission was likely not possible without Israeli cooperation.Today, the Israelis
caved in and agreed to do exactly that, contrary to even Moon's expectations. What changed?
As I reported
a week ago, the Obama Administration decided to support the creation of a UN-backed kangaroo court to 'investigate' the Gaza flotilla incident. Obama likely threatened Israel with refraining from American vetoes in the Security Council and abstaining from voting in areas like the General Assembly, the infamous UN Human Rights Council and the other U.N. bodies where ridiculously biased anti-Israel motions and resolutions are the normal, day to day routine.
Obama's UN ambassador Dr. Susan Rice
hailed this, saying “The United States expects that the Panel[‘s]…work will be the primary method for the international community to review the incident, obviating the need for any overlapping international inquiries.” She said in her statement that the panel probing the incident would have limited authority and will "make recommendations as to how to avoid such incidents in the future."
Meanwhile, outside of fantasy land, the so-called UN Human Rights Council, which has already condemned Israel's “outrageous attack” is holding its
own investigation of exactly the same flotilla incident on what it has already labeled as Israeli 'aggression.' Since the UNHRC is controlled by the member states rather than the UN itself, that 'investigation' is going to continue. And there's absolutely nothing that mandates which investigation is going to receive precedence.Or how 'limited' their scope or authority is going to be.
Netanyahu probably went along went along with this because he felt that he had more to gain than to lose in terms of American good will. That was a mistake of historic proportions.
What he has done, for the first time ever, is to subject the actions of the armed forces of a democratic state under attack by a terrorist entity to the jurisdiction of the UN.
There are no limits over what the 'inquiry' will cover, who can be made to testify, where information and evidence gathered by the 'inquiry' can be used or what charges can be leveled against IDF soldiers afterwards. Rest assured that any 'inquiry' by the UN will focus entirely on Israel and ignore Turkey, Hamas or the IHH. And that any time Israel defends itself in the future, the entire circus will be repeated.
Aside from setting a horrendous precedent for Israel, imagine the spectacle of American military personnel dragged before the International Court of Justice under the Muslim dominated UN auspices to be sentenced for 'human rights offenses' in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere. Thanks to Obama's support for a UN lynching of Israel, a precedent has been set for America as well.
This sort of blowback probably doesn't trouble Obama as long as he's able to use this technique to undermine Israel. But it could very well come back to haunt us in the future.
