The Obama Administration reaches out to some of the world’s worst regimes in the name of their engagement policy. America and our allies watch as sanctions are eased on Cuba. Letters are written to Iran’s mullahs only to see that regime start killing protestors in the streets of Tehran. Envoys are sent to North Korea as they continue to defy the world’s demand to give up their nuclear weapons. The Burmese military junta’s representative is allowed to travel to our nation’s capital. The President’s envoy for Sudan talks about giving that genocidal regime “gold stars,” while the President shakes hands with Venezuela’s tyrannical leader. In the midst of all this embracing of enemies, where does the Obama Administration choose to escalate a minor incident into a major diplomatic confrontation? With Iran, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea or Burma? No. With our treasured ally, Israel.
Last October, Secretary of State Clinton recognized Israel’s desire for peace in the Middle East and praised Israel’s “unprecedented” concessions for agreeing to halt settlement construction in the West Bank, a concession that did NOT include halting construction of apartments for Jews in Jerusalem. Even last week after planned construction was announced, Vice President Biden still expressed “appreciation” for the “significant” steps taken by the Israeli government to address this minor issue. Now, however, we see the Obama Administration has decided to escalate, make unilateral demands of Israel, and threaten the very foundation of the US-Israel relationship. This is quickly leading to the worst crisis in US-Israel relations in decades, and yet this did not have to happen. More importantly, it needs to stop before it spirals out of control. Vice President Biden should rein in the overheated Obama Administration rhetoric and chill the political spin masters’ fire as they visit the Sunday media shows to criticize Israel.
Once again, the Obama Administration is missing the boat on a very, very important issue. They need to go back to the basics and acknowledge Palestinian leaders have not progressed any peace process since President Obama was elected. As Israel makes concessions (and is still criticized by the Obama Administration), Arab leaders are just sitting back waiting for the White House to further pressure Israel. The Obama Administration needs to open its eyes and recognize that it is only Iran and her terrorist allies that benefit from this manufactured Israeli controversy. Vice President Biden was actually right when he said last week, before the construction announcement, that “one necessary precondition for progress is that the rest of the world knows…there is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to security.” Right now, thanks to the Obama Administration, there is a chasm. It’s time for President Obama to push the reset button on our relations with our ally Israel.
- Sarah Palin
[Source]
A treasured ally?
Don’t you mean accomplice in the theft of Palestine and the apartheid of Muslim Palestinians.
They’re treasured among neo-conservatives, the Evangelical right and SOME of the Jewish population (though it is a GREAT time to point out that many Jews are disgusted by some of that nation’s deedd). These constituencies are large enough and moneyed enough to swing U.S . foreign policy in Israel’s favour. In reality, the nation does very little for the USA and the the few intelligence services they do provide:
1) Could be equaled by Turkish or Saudi intelligence
2) Is easily offset by the amount of spying they do ON the U.S.
But their lobby is strong and until the U.S. no longer promotes a pay-to-play lobby system you can expect Israel to spoken of a very “treasured” ally.
Israel has been the only democracy in the middle east for decades, the only country to respect human rights – as evidenced by Arab Muslims who flee their countries to seek asylum in Israel. Fascist Islam, aided and abetted by left-leaning liberals in the West, want to destroy not just Israel but the Jews themselves. Liberals, along with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may believe that the extermination of Israel and the Jews would bring peace in the middle east, but the reality is that the majority of conflicts around the world today involve Muslims, and this violence would go on whether or not Israel existed.
The Obama Administration has been soft regimes and dictators that declare themselves sworn enemies of the United States – Obama pledges not to meddle in their internal affairs – but with American allies, Obama is more than willing to meddle in their internal, and external, affairs. Respect for America from friends and enemies has fallen dramatically with Obama in power, he’s a disaster – for the world. There is Hope he will wake up from his child-like stupor and realize that promoting universal human rights and individual freedoms, although a difficult task, is better for everyone in the world. Hopefully he may realize one day that there wouldn’t be an America for him to screw up without those principles.
The lefts policy is to be anti Israel. As such the media will report on the issue in such a fashion as to justify the lefts position.
Its not much different with Global Warming. Its a leftist construct/policy, and as such the media is fully on board with it, and promoting the agenda through propaganda.
Even now that AGW and the IPCC have been fully and completely discredited, the media still pumps out the propaganda, occaisionally running a story on Climategate to imply balance.
They are managing and manipulating the story in favor of AGW promoters/advocates.
The Israel issue is exactly the same. Unfortunately the lies breed anti Semitism.
Israel could not have been complicit in the theft of anything because it did not yet exist until after Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, along with Palestenian Arabs, attacked the mostly displaced Jews who had been gathering in Palestine as a result of the Second World War, in a clear rejection of the United Nation’s poorly thought out and terribly executed General Assembly Resolution 181, otherwise known as the UN Partition Plan for Palestine. As the resulting 1948 Arab–Israeli War commenced, the UN personel who were supposed to oversee the partition plan, as well as administer Jerusalem as a seperate body, bolted for their own safety (the British had already begun pulling out and heading home so as to help rebuild bombed out Britain), leaving the Jews to fend for themselves. Having already been driven out of their homes in Europe and the formentioned Arab nations without any compensation, exactly as happened to many Palestinian Arabs, these Jews had every right to defend themselves, and they still do now that Israel does, undeniably in fact, exist. Palestinian Arabs on the other hand are still located in Gaza and the West Bank exactly where they were supposed to be under the UN’s ridiculous Partition Plan, so if anyone is guilty of theft or apartheid it is the UN, including Canada, since our signature can be found on UN General Assembly Resolution 181. The Israelis only real crime is in being successful in their struggles, where the Palestinian Arabs have not been, and such a crime against equality of outcomes is the worst offence that most lefties can imagine. The UN started out useless, and it is still useless, except of course when it comes to convincing Palestinian Arabs and gullible lefty types that the myriad of mistakes it has made should actually be blamed on the Jews.
Re #5 Brian I agree here that the origins of Israel was U.N. mismanagement which put both peoples in a situation of ” survival mode ” where the Israelis where successful in creating a viable state but where the Palestinians specialized in hate and victimhood.
Most of this was the maintaining of the Palestinians as refugees in refugee camps by their Arab neighbours who refused them citizenships in the countries they ended up in and to keep the festering hate of Israel on the boiling point: So their misery isn’t all of their making.
QUOTE: ” The Israelis only real crime is in being successful in their struggles, where the Palestinian Arabs have not been, and such a crime against equality of outcomes is the worst offence that most lefties can imagine. ”
To small L liberals or lefties the successful have to be the bad guys since success only comes from exploiting others and couldn’t possibly just be because of hard work and intelligent use of resources and ” CAPITALISM “. The unsuccessful can only be this way because someone else has exploited them, robbed them and it’s always the fault of the other guy ! The left sees the World as if it was the film ” AVATAR ” and within the simplistic context of the film’s storyline the natives are the good guys but in the real World it’s a lot harder to separate the good from the bad.
That was a terrific Post Brian
If BHO was a Muslim extremist who wished to destroy America, could he advance his cause more effectively than he has so far done, without being found out?
Israel could not have been complicit in the theft of anything because it did not yet exist until after Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, along with Palestinian Arabs, attacked the mostly displaced Jews who had been gathering in Palestine as a result of the Second World War, in a clear rejection of the United Nation’s poorly thought out and terribly executed General Assembly Resolution 181
Wrong. The first Aliya took place during the 1870′s. Later, first Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland (1897), Theodore Herzl would write “Were I to sum up the Basle Congress in a word- which I shall guard against pronouncing publicly- it would be this: ‘At Basle, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. If not in 5 years, certainly in 50, everyone will know it.”
Europeans of Jewish decent had their eyes on the holy land long before Adolph Hitler proved himself a mediocre artist and chose to take it out on others.
Jews may have dreamed of having their own homeland, especially since they were persecuted everywhere else, but what makes that a crime? Aliyah is simply the immigration of Jews to the the Holy Land, it was Moses who led the first wave, and they occured all throughout history, long before the term Zionism was coined. The Arabs were also nomads who would come and go from Palestine throughtout history so why was it only theft for the Jews to do so?
The Ottoman Empire wasn’t an overly hospitible place for Jews, so much so that Jerusalem became a backwater town and for a while had a Muslim majority, however, Jews were also treated as second class citizens in Europe so the number of Jews returning to the Holy Land rose significantly between the 13th and 19th centuries. By 1799 when Napolean Bonaparte, after witnessing how Jews were being persecuted all over Europe, expressed his plans to create a Jewish state there, Jews had already once again become the majority in Jerusalem.
At any rate, the Jews are definately there now, and Israel does indeed exist, so deal with it.
Well said Brian and I hope that those in the Muslim world are listening but I doubt it therefore more will die on both sides of the border.
As for those in the Muslim world, wasnt it Muslim Turkey that massed murdered all those Armenian Christians which is now being recognized throughout the world as Genocide?
Hillary Clinton’s/Biden’s faux rage at Israel’s decision to go ahead with a condominium project in E. Jerusalem, was just that — unfounded criticism. The agreement is that no new construction in the West Bank take place. It DOES NOT include the capital’s domain.
Going way back to ’48 and the State of Israel being declared amidst dozens of Arab states, the sliver of land that was Israel was completely barren and the properties were being sold in droves BY PALESTINIANS/ARABS as history recounts.
Search Gay & Rights blog archives for the actual historical accounts. Once the land thrived due to the brute force/efforts of the return/aliyah, the Palestinians wanted the ‘land parcels’ back, as they witnessed agricultural/.economic successes.
Meanwhile, the end goal of the Arab states is to push Israel out to sea, expel them altogether from the right to their anscestral soil.
Neither the West Bank nor the Golan Heights can be forfeited since it would mean Israel’s virtual suicide in the region. The West Bank is where the world class water aquifiers exist and those technologies are sought world-wide, particularly by China where relatively recent earthquakes devasted the water reserves.
Also, the Golan Heights would be conceding territory whereby Syria could roll over the ‘sliver’ that is Israel. The two locations cannot be conceded, else Israel might as well relocate to German soil, like Ibn Saud in early twenties recommended to Roosevelt who tried to negotiate with him over the Arabs recognizing ‘the other.’
Israel must continue to say no to any return to pre-1967 borders and the U.S. ally knows this. So do the Arabs. Who have their eye on Iran’s nuclear plans.