THE PRESIDENT’S ISRAEL PROBLEM SEEMS TO HAVE METASTASIZED

Posted By on April 15th, 2010

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/04/14/obamas-israel-problem/?print=1
Obama’s Israel Problem
Posted By Roger L Simon

Barack Obama has an Israel problem. I won’t say a Jewish problem, because that wouldn’t be “politically correct.” As we all know, anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism (or is it?).

Anyway, the President’s Israel problem couldn’t be more obvious and it seems to have increased, or should I say metastasized, in parallel with his popular decline, almost in the way that classic Jew hatred increased during times of economic downturn (Weimar Republic, etc.) Not that anyone who spent two decades in Reverend Wright’s church with its hero worship of Louis Farrakhan and generally racist tinge was likely to be philo-Semitic. But things have gotten worse. Indeed, his very close friends at the New York Times [1] are now reporting that the President, in the wake of the supposedly surprise announcement of new Jewish housing units in Jerusalem, “has seized control of Middle East policy himself.” They go on to note : “Mr. Obama, incensed by that snub, has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a list of demands, and relations between the United States and Israel have fallen into a chilly standoff.”

Incensed by the snub? List of demands. Chilly standoff? In other words, as we say in Hollywood, this time it’s personal. But should it be? How odd. A week or so ago, I wrote a post describing Barack Obama as President Weirdo [2]. Indeed here we have more evidence of this psychological disturbance, because this response to Israel is not in the realm of the rational. It is highly neurotic. Somewhere in the unconscious of Barack Obama are a stew of forces now directed (or cathected) on the Jewish state and its leader. Not a healthy state of affairs for anyone. (Well, maybe for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.)

Until now Jewish leaders had been relatively silent on the matter. Some of the more famous ones in my hometown of Hollywood (Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, David Geffen – supposedly great friends of Israel) have been as quiet as clams. But finally one is speaking up. Ron Lauder of the World Jewish Congress has written a strong letter of protest to Obama [3], which is being published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post – not, interestingly, in the aforementioned pro-Obama newspaper that notoriously misreported [4] the Ukrainian Holodomor and underreported [5]the Holocaust. In his letter, Mr. Lauder writes:

Israel has publicly declared support for a two-state solution. Conversely, many Palestinians continue their refusal to even acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

The conflict’s root cause has always been the Palestinian refusal to accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Every American President who has tried to broker a peace agreement has collided with that Palestinian intransigence, sooner or later. Recall President Clinton’s anguish when his peace proposals were bluntly rejected by the Palestinians in 2000.

Of course that is not the root cause in the mind of Barack Obama. It is Israeli intransigence. As Michael Ledeen [6] wrote in these pages, he is like an undergraduate at a bull session, sucking on a joint as he nods in agreement with the clichéd jargon of an “anti-imperialist” foreign exchange student. He hid this, to some extent, during his political campaign but now, under stress, the Tea Party parvenus more popular than he, he can no longer repress his true impulses. Out they have popped, ungoverned as dreams.

One wonders what his advisors, my landsmen Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, must think. My guess is they are very confused fellows with many sleepless nights. They deserve them. Whatever advice they may have given their President, it appears not to have been good. Or perhaps he has completely overrun their advice. Who knows? Whatever the case, his behavior has certainly not won the hearts and minds of the Israeli public. A gigantic 91% [7] oppose Obama’s possible attempt to impose a deal on Israel, an unheard of number in opposition to an American president – and that from a populace that tends to the liberal, a country where one of the few, if only, socialist successes ever flourished, the kibbutz.

Of course, Obama’s actions are making every Israeli into a dreaded Likudnik. Why wouldn’t they? When a man acts on inchoate impulses tinged with rage, there’s no telling what he will do. If this goes on much longer, he may even change the voting patterns of the American Jewish public. Stranger things have happened. Just wait.

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Article printed from Roger L. Simon: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon

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