RUTHFULLY YOURS

OBAMA’S GOAL? TO MAKE ISRAEL A PARIAH….SARAH HONIG

Posted By Ruth King on April 6th, 2010

Another Tack: Putty in his hands
By SARAH HONIG

April 2, 2010, The Jerusalem Post
Obama’s pressure is all about attempting to make Israel more of an
international pariah than it already is.

Lonely, vulnerable, affection-craving Israel always yearned for
friends. It always also liked to kid itself that it has friends.
Hence, at a ceremony half-a-century ago, standing alongside Charles de
Gaulle, David Ben-Gurion extolled French friendship for little,
renascent, plucky Israel. With no compunctions, haughty de Gaulle
doused BG’s warm sentiments. “In international affairs,” he intoned
superciliously, “there are no friends, only interests.”

Though unpleasant and untactful, de Gaulle was at least honest, which
is more than can be said for Barack Obama.

It doesn’t take a paranoid conspiracy-theory promoter to speculate
that the pressure brought to bear by the US president on Israel has
little to do with furthering the peace process. Obama’s pressure in
fact contradicts the cause of peace. It’s no conjecture to argue that
it has everything to do with attempting to diminish Israel, shoving it
into a corner, intensifying the ostracism to which it’s subjected and
making it more of an international pariah than it already is.

Why?

Because that would weaken and demoralize Israel to such an extent that
it would become putty in Obama’s hands. He could then appease the Arab
world at its expense.

Along that line too we may conclude that Obama, having wasted more
than a year’s worth of invaluable time, doesn’t really intend to
prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. He certainly doesn’t want
Israel to preempt that probability either. He prefers it helpless,
threatened and frightened.

Why?

Because then it would be putty in his hands and he’d presumably earn
the undying gratitude of the Arab/Muslim world.

That’s why, rather than engage in dialogue, Obama spoils for a fight ­
all the while professing to be our best friend. And we credulously
repeat his assurance and use it as a cogent rationalization for why we
mustn’t displease him. Who can afford to upset a devoted friend?
Especially when friends are so rare.

IT ALL calls to mind an old Plains Indian admonition that “what looks
true by the glow of the camp fire isn’t always true in sunlight.”

Native Americans, after all, learned from bitter experience to
mistrust the compassionate posture of the Great Father in Washington
and his treaty promises.

Our own tribal myth, often repeated around our proverbial camp fire,
persistently portrays various White House residents as trusted
friends, who presume to know better than we what’s best for us. Thus
Obama presses for benevolent eugenics ­ needless to say for our own
good ­ when insisting we forthwith freeze all construction and
effectively end natural growth in what he calls settlements, including
significant swaths of Jerusalem. No greater problems plague the world
than Jewish babies.

This hardly began with the 1,600 Ramat Shlomo apartments. Already
months ago, Obama’s radical ideologues looked exceeding askance on
blueprints for a new hotel and shopping center near the Old City.
They’re into the nitty-gritty of daily metropolitan minutiae. They
know the devil is in the details and no detail, no matter how
outwardly trivial, escapes their scrupulous attention. They’ll
relentlessly breathe down our supposedly sovereign neck and show us
who’s boss ­ friendly like.

But who are we to quibble and second-guess? Our best friends may
indeed be shrewd beyond our inferior comprehension. Or it might be
that what looks like friendship isn’t what it seems.

If we examine the history of Israeli-American relations in the
non-distorting sunlight, we may conclude that the US consistently
deprived Israel of victory, indirectly encouraged Arab attacks,
instigated terrorism and gave incentive to Arab intransigence. What’s
euphemistically labeled a “peace process” was always the process to
divest Israel of vital strategic assets. Israeli governments in effect
never negotiated with Arab interlocutors without intervention by
America.

Way back in 1948, despite Harry Truman’s hesitant de facto recognition
of newborn Israel, America’s arms embargo emboldened Arab invaders.
When Dwight Eisenhower forced Israel out of the Sinai in 1957, he
promised to keep the Tiran Straits open. Gamal Abdel Nasser blockaded
them a decade later, but America reneged on its assurances, signaling
Egypt that its aggression would be tolerated. Had the US honored its
undertaking, there would have been no Six Day War and no “occupation”
for Washington to urgently seek to end.

The US-brokered 1970 Israeli-Egyptian truce hinged on American
guarantees that no heavy weaponry would be advanced. On the
cease-fire’s first night, however, the Egyptians moved dozens of
anti-aircraft missiles to the Suez Canal’s bank, facilitating the
eventual launch of the Yom Kippur War. American silence was deafening.
At the end of the 1973 war, the US saved the surrounded Egyptian Third
Army from surrender, thereby robbing Israel of incontestable triumph.

Recurrently imposed cease-fires ­ whenever Israel begins inflicting
pain on the terrorists ­ fit the above pattern.

Ronald Reagan frequently noted that without Israel the Soviets would
have occupied Saudi oil fields. This, though, never prevented
Washington from trying to squeeze Israel back into the precarious June
4, 1967, lines.

But what about American assistance? Contrary to popular lore, the
equivalent of what Israel contributed to the US immeasurably
surpasses, even in monetary terms, the sum total of what America gave
Israel from the 1970s on (prior to that we got nothing, yet
miraculously managed to thrive). America enjoyed access to Israeli
intelligence, including information on Soviet weaponry, battlefield
tryouts for American military hardware, their innovative improvement,
etc.

Moreover, American aid costs us big time and 75 percent of it must be
spent stateside. It coerces Israel to consume American-manufactured
goods ­ from arms to uniforms. These can be produced locally. The fact
that they aren’t contributes to unemployment here and stunts research
and development. America’s new-generation fighter planes are so
exorbitantly priced that it’s no longer prudent to buy them. Yet
what’s the alternative? Our reduction to vassal-state status was
completed when the US vetoed the Israeli-made Lavi and exports by our
defense and aviation industries.

LAST SUMMER the Pentagon nixed Israel Aerospace Industries
participation in a tender to supply military aircraft to India. Israel
is essentially ordered to withdraw from whichever tender US firms also
compete in or face the consequences of jeopardizing the “special
bond.” Israel was forced to prefer Boeing to Airbus and retract higher
import tariffs on large cars. Hillary even badgered Bibi to allow
seven containers of American carp into Israel customs-free. Our
gefilte fish is Washington’s business.

America has its own interests, however misguided, and Obama takes to
extremes the underlying premise that Israel is a pain in the backside.
When Israeli leaders obsequiously suck up, they allow dim and flaring
camp fire illumination to obstruct this reality. They duplicate their
predecessors’ flagrant fundamental misconceptions to Israel’s
detriment.

It’s not that we have better friends than America. We don’t. In fact,
we have no friends. De Gaulle’s harsh truth should guide our
policymakers and be enunciated loudly and fearlessly. Pseudo-friends
can be only comforting and useful occasionally, on condition that we
maintain suspicious vigilance, as another bit of Native American folk
wisdom advises.

It enjoins: “Beware the friend who covers you with his wings, only to
injure you with his beak.”

The writer was The Jerusalem Post’s long-time political correspondent
(as well as for years of the now-defunct Davar). She headed the Post’s
Tel Aviv bureau, wrote daily analyses of the political scene as well
as in-depth features. See her personal blog at
http://www.sarahhonig.com

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