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At a time when the Jewish State is gaining favor with the American people, it is losing favor with the American president. About six weeks ago, Gallup found, “For the first time since 1991, more than 6 in 10 Americans — 63% — say their sympathies in the Middle East situation lie more with the Israelis than with the Palestinians.”
But, while the American people have been focusing on the health care debate and worrying about the employment situation, the Obama Administration has been quietly pulling the rug out from under our Israeli allies, the staunchest supporter of democracy and opponent of terrorism in the Middle East.
The president delivered an ultimatum to the Israeli Prime Minister, leaving him to cool his heels while he went off to have dinner; that is, the American leader who was discourteous to the leader of a sovereign nation and an ally. Netanyahu wouldn’t accept Obama’s demands. Never before has a U.S. President made such demands of an ally, much less expected him to act exactly as the American leader told him. He treated him a leader would treat an enemy defeated in a contest of arms.
And it’s been reported that, “The United States has diverted a shipment of bunker-busters designated for Israel“:
Officials said the U.S. military was ordered to divert a shipment of smart bunker-buster bombs from Israel to a military base in Diego Garcia. They said the shipment of 387 smart munitions had been slated to join pre-positioned U.S. military equipment in Israel Air Force bases.
Yesterday, we learned, “The Obama administration is now denying U.S. visas to Israeli scientists who work at that nation’s Dimona nuclear reactor.” There seems no purpose to this action, save to thumb his nose at the Jewish State.
Perhaps, we might have learned of the Democrat’s antipathy to Israel during the campaign had the LA Times released a video of a “2003 banquet during which Obama, who was then an Illinois state senator, spoke of his relationship with Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American Orientalist who is known for his frequent criticism of Israel“.
The president seems closer to the views of that radical Palestinian that to those of the people he serves.
I do hope Senators Schumer and Boxer, who have both been very good on Israel, are expressing their concerns directly and strongly to the president and asking him to change course.
UPDATE: Joshuapundit (via Roger Simon) reports:
This is a new policy decision of the Obama administration. Up until now, it was routine for Israeli nuclear scientists and technicians to receive such visas and to study at US universities.
UP-UPDATE: Via Roger Simon who alerted me to the story:
MORE (IMPORTANT): An interesting follow-up to this story has been published by Politico, including a denial by a White House spokesman and an indirect denial from an unnamed Israeli official. The White House denial seems odd given that I was told by a State Department spokesperson that federal law prohibits (see above) discussing individual visa cases. Well, never mind. More importantly the Politico author, Ben Smith, calls the sourcing of the original Maariv article “a bit hazy” when that article quotes Dr. Zeev Alfassi, a professor of nuclear engineering at Ben Gurion University in the Negev, verbatim on the subject. Hazy sourcing? Well, again, never mind. Pajamas
Media has sent email to Dr. Alfassi and we will see what he has to say about the matter.
UP-UP-UPDATE: Via Instapundit: ROGER SIMON ISSUES A CORRECTION: Visa Policy For Israeli Nuclear Scientists Did Not Begin With Obama Admin.
And the Jews love Il Douche……..WHY?
Bamboozled and easily led, is all. Same reason blacks/A-A’s… think the Democrats were the ones who passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and now they even attribute the firehoses, dogs and protests to Republicans and Conservatives. It sickens me; but at least it’s a changed historical perspective: today’s gays think AT THE PRESENT time, Democrats work on their behalf and have actually achieved something/anything for them.
Perhaps a bit of discussion about Jews opposing Zionism or lukewarm on Israel is in order. Not being Jewish, I am always perplexed by the conundrum of the atheist Jew, the concept of the Jewish race, Jews against Israel and Jews who labor at their Jewish “identity.”
I mention this, because I have no idea what flows through the thought processes of Boxer, Schumer, Emmanuel, or a host of others when it comes Zionism and Israel. I was amazed when the neo-cons (code for Jews turned hawk) were targeted.
Who on the national scene besides Koch and Lieberman has stood up for Israel?
But Obama is not Jewish and he certainly has tried to marginalize Netanyahu. Can Israel defend itself without US government support and backing? Can an Obama crippled Democrat Congress stand up for Israel? Do Americans care more about their own problems than those of Israel? Has China taken so much ownership of US policy through its clear ownership of the US budget that they dictate the terms?
Us “crazy,old, bitter,clinging to our guns,religious people” did warn of his friends and how they were against Israel and pretty much everything he said he was for in the campaign. the thing is, no one really listened or would put on the news ,in the papers and if it did make it anywhere the descriptive terms above along with the word racist were used and we were dismissed.
I hear-tell Israel is going to GERMANY for help since they can’t count on the US.
Say, I though Il Douche was gonna make everybody love us. Seems to me that he’s keen on pissing on everybody’s shoes. Well, he does lick dictator boots though.
My jewish friends tell me their inclinations for the Dems has historically been their perception of Dem’s more socially moderate views even though Repubs have been traditionally more pro-israel. The Bush administration tied its support of Israel to the demands of the extreme fundamental christians. Here’s hoping the Repubs will support Israel because it’s the right thing to do and that jewish americans will begin to realize Dems consider them to be a captive vote. Daniel, how say you?
Maybe this is all a disinformation campaign to invite the Iranians to overreach, and there’s secretly a joint U.S. & Israel mission in the works to take out the Iranian nuke project? The smart bomb spotters will be leprechauns and flying monkeys.
A question unanswerable, unless one is dealing with first
class nimnods.
What do expect from a man surrounded by anti-American friends and a bunch of anti-semites.
American Jews remind me of the pre WW II German Jews. They thought Hitler couldn’t possibly mean them.
They were more German than Jews. They thought he meant, you know the other Jews. Those over there.
Barack Obama is an enemy of Israel, and his incompetence and IslamoFascist sympathies are endangering the United States.
Israel can not allow Iran to get a nuclear capability and I would support the Israeli use of nuclear weapons NOW against Iran to stop them. Obama will not allow Israel conventional weapons to protect themselves.
Jewish liberalism-leftism is a cultural thing their ancestors brought over from Europe–German Jews after the revolutions of 1848, Polish and other Eastern European Jews fleeing pogroms that accelerated in the period after the assassination of Czar Aleksander II, right up to the start of WW1.
I am reform Jewish in a VERY liberal temple (across the street from Obama’s Chicago house; he was my IL State Senator and while we don’t know the Obamas, my wife and I have many mutual friends and acquaintances) and in my opinion many if not most of them will rationalize throwing Israel off the boat before conceding any ground on their dreams of making the US a European-style social democracy. I could be wrong, the future is unknowable, but I’m pretty sure.
“The Bush administration tied its support of Israel to the demands of the extreme fundamental christians.”
Oh gee whiz! This sounds like something Rosie O’Donnell says.
Or the NYC Jews who would say “Bush is Hitler BUT AMerica must protect Israel” I support Israel however it was weird to hear Jews demand ‘Bush the Hitler’ protect Israel.
WHEN ARE THE PARANOID GOING TO GET OVER THEIR ANAL PARANOIA?
What makes me sick about this anal paranoia, as Melanie Phillips mentioned recently, the Jihad Pogrom is happening and it is happening to CHRISTIANS in African regrettably the anally paranoid ARE LOOKING AWAY BECAUSE WHO THE FUCK CARES ABOUT THE MASS CLEANSING OF ‘FUNDAMENTALIST ‘CHRISTIANS IN AFRICA!
SOCIAL MODERATES, some screwy morality you have in your souls.
The more I learned of The Won during the 2008 campaign, the more certain I became that there would be a nuclear exchange in the Middle East. Until now, Israel has always had the ability not to put everything in play, because they knew that the U.S. had their back and that if push truly came to shove a bedrock principle of U.S. policy was that Israel would not be permitted to perish. We have now unmistakably communicated to Israel in word and deed that they’re on their own. Back when I was serving in a tin can, we had a saying: Sink with an empty magazine. What is the likelihood that Israel’s government has not reached a similar conclusion? Who can blame them if they have? Their neighbors are bent on a second Holocaust and make no secret of it. Were I a member of the Israeli government, my single over-riding pledge to my ancestors and my children would be that I would see the world itself burn before I suffer my people to be herded to their slaughter on my watch. And let God alone judge my cause.
Obama has no moral connection to Israel and views it as a strategic liability in making friends with the Muslim world. It is the so-called “realist” viewpoint of Scowcroft, Baker and
Brzezinski (ok the last one named is also tinged with pure anti-semitism). It cuts across left-right politics. Sitting at the lap of Khalidi, he is probably unaware that the Jewish claim to the land has nothing to do with the Holocaust and probably does not believe that Jerusalem was a Jewish city for thousands of years. I suspect Obama knows very little history in general.
If Israel has banked its existence on the US forever running diplomatic interference for it and supplying it with munitions, then foolish Israel. The Israelis have the brainpower and energy to be self-sufficient, it’s a matter of will.
I’ve summed it up in the past. “Why does President Obama hate free people?”