Israel; Obama’s Red-Headed Step Child

In the past couple of days, more has come to light with Obama’s stance, or lack there of, for support of Israel, compared to the rest of the Middle East and in particular, Iran and Palestine.

The Obama administration, namely Rahm Emanuel, also holds similar beliefs, which may strike some as odd, due to the fact that Rahm is Jewish.  However, Rahm insisted on Monday that the only way to thwart Iran’s nuclear threat and resolve relations with the Middle East would come to fruition through Palestinian-Israeli talks.

Israeli TV stations had reported Monday night that Emanuel had actually linked the two matters, saying that the efforts to stop Iran hinged on peace talks with the Palestinians. The remarks were reportedly made in a closed-door meeting previous day with 300 major AIPAC donors on Sunday.

Last month, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Israel that it risks losing Arab support for combating threats from Iran if it rejects peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

Clinton said Arab nations had conditioned helping Israel counter Iran on Jerusalem’s commitment to the peace process.

Meanwhile, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post on Sunday, former US House speaker Newt Gingrich blasted the Obama administration for setting itself on a collision course with Israel and endangering the Jewish state.

He called US President Barack Obama’s program of engagement with Iran a “fantasy,” and his Middle East policies “very dangerous for Israel.” He summed up Obama’s approach as “the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter.”

And Newt is right, we should have learned our lesson after Carter, but we didn’t.  One could then argue that we should have learned it after Clinton tried this same peace treaty mumbo-jumbo between Palestine and Israel. (The Oslo Accord in 1993 and the Wye River Memorandum).  Later we came to find out that Yasir Arafat spoke out of both sides of his mouth and eventually was caught speaking at PLO and Hamas engagements/rallies. (But by then he had already received the Nobel Peace Prize)

If liberals are so adamant about the United States staying out of the business of other nations (their biggest qualm for the last 8 years was Iraq and forcing democracy) then why is forcing a treaty, peace, or a recognized state on a nation ok?

What causes those that are so progressive to think that Iran and other nations, that have continuously ranted and raved about the Jews and Israel, would ever want peace?  Middle Eastern history has a very large Nazi influence and therefore, they have called for the extermination of Jews, and the West.  There is something seriously wrong with a situation in which people cannot call a spade a spade and see the threat that is in front of their very eyes.

Take for example the latest; Ahmadinejad went on another tirade about Israel yesterday:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad slammed Zionism as “occupation” and “aggression” Tuesday as he delivered his latest diatribe against the Jewish state on a visit to key Middle East ally Syria.

Zionism is merely the recognition of the Jewish state based on biblical times.  The state of Israel was promised to the Jews before WWII and before others in the Middle East occupied the region.  Israelis do not try to force themselves onto other nations by attempting to conquer the rest of the Middle East or enforce their religion on others – that’s the main difference and the reason why Ahmadinejad cannot be taken seriously.

“The Zionist occupiers are destructive microbes, because Zionism itself is occupation, aggression, the use of assassination and annihilation,” he told a joint news conference with President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian capital.

“Zionism was created to threaten us. To support the Palestinian resistance is a humanitarian and popular obligation,” Ahmadinejad said in remarks in Farsi that were translated into Arabic.

“Syria and Iran are united in supporting the Palestinian resistance.”

The Iranian president’s comments came barely two weeks after he sparked a European walkout from a UN anti-racism conference in Geneva by equating Zionism with racism.

This intolerance does not help the cause in the Middle East and it only raises more eyebrows from the majority of the public who do not define themselves as progressive or liberal.  This is not the way to show you are ready for peace.  Even if some peace accord was met, it would be hard for me to believe that Iran and others would not continue to hold their “thousand” year grudge against Israel and have the same anti-Semitic sentiments.

Ahmadinejad asked why it was the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza that is blacklisted by the European Union and the United States, and not Israel after its devastating offensive against the territory at the turn of the year.

“They’ve attacked Gaza, killing people in their own land and massacring women and children… and yet it’s the Palestinians they accuse of terrorism,” he complained.

Maybe because Israel didn’t initiate attacks?  Maybe they retaliated in a more powerful way to stop the thousands of missiles from entering their country and endangering their citizens?  Hamas sent over 3,000 missiles into Israeli airspace over the course of last year.

Israelis have also evacuated the Gaza strip and it is Palestinians that use their own for propaganda purposes reporting deaths in the region and accuse Israelis of those crimes.  The main difference between Hamas and the Palestinians and the Israelis is that Israelis do not use women and children as shields, they use themselves to shield their women and children – I respect that more than the prior.

The United States “has put pressure on Syria and Iran, but it needs us and wants to develop relations,” he said.

The scariest statement by Ahmadinejad is the following:

“Circumstances are changing rapidly in our favour. We are on the road to victory.”

That should give you the chills!

The appeasement and call for universal nuclear disarmament is another alarming policy change on the horizon.  This step to disarm would include Israel’s nukes, which would cause an inevitable disaster, leaving Israel completely vulnerable to any and all attacks on their soil by countries like Iran who are not a party to the United Nations or any other international treaties.

President Obama’s efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons threaten to expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S. agreement to shield Israel’s nuclear weapons from international scrutiny, former and current U.S. and Israeli officials and nuclear specialists say.

The issue will likely come to a head when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Mr. Obama on May 18 in Washington. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to seek assurances from Mr. Obama that he will uphold the U.S. commitment and will not trade Israeli nuclear concessions for Iranian ones.

Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, speaking Tuesday at a U.N. meeting on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), said Israel should join the treaty, which would require Israel to declare and relinquish its nuclear arsenal.

“Universaladherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea, … remains a fundamental objective of the United States,” Ms. Gottemoeller told the meeting, according to Reuters.

She declined to say, however, whether the Obama administration would press Israel to join the treaty.

A senior White House official said the administration considered the nuclear programs of Israel and Iran to be unrelated “apples and oranges.”

Apples and oranges?  The weapons programs may be different as far as quality and caliber, but if you continue to let Iran build up its nuclear facilities, centrifuges, and uranium/plutonium supplies, it will be sure to catch up – especially whilst Israel is vulnerable and doesn’t have the weaponry to defend itself anymore.

AIPAC, the strongest pro-Israeli lobby in the nation and on Capitol Hill, is on the case and working to fight the urgent push from the Obama administration to create a Palestinian state.

US congressional leaders and the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US are attempting to forestall a significant shift in the White House’s Middle East policy.

The move comes amid growing signs that the US president, Barack Obama, intends to press for urgent efforts to be made towards the creation of a Palestinian state.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is visiting Washington later this month amid growing expectations that Obama is preparing to take a tougher line over Israel’s reluctance to actively seek a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians.

It will be the first time that Netanyahu and Obama have met since both were elected.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) this week sent hundreds of lobbyists to urge members of Congress to sign a letter to Obama.

The letter, written by two House of Representatives leaders, calls for Israel to be allowed to set the pace of negotiations.

I would agree, that the pace of negotiations for an international issue be set by the countries involved, not the United States.

Maybe the issue here is that too many progressives have gotten the jihad hip-hop bug.  I hear it’s hard to ignore!/sarc.

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