Sunday, December 13, 2015

Israel and the Decline of American Support Under Obama

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}

White Flag1It needs to be understood that the United States has no intention, whatsoever, of fighting political Islam (or "radical Islam" or "Islamism") and will likely not do so anytime in the near future.

On the contrary, the foremost Islamist force in the world is the country of Iran and the United States has switched sides from opposing Iranian Islamist ideology, and expansionism, to supporting it as an alternative to Pax Americana.  This means that the United States, particularly under the current administration, is morphing into an enemy of the Jewish State of Israel and, thus, into an enemy of the Jewish people.

Current polling demonstrates American hostility toward Israel is growing, particularly among Democrats and "progressives."  In fact, recent polling for the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings demonstrates that a full 49 percent of Democrats believe that Israel has too much influence over American politics.

Unless things change significantly with the new American administration in 2016 - which is unlikely short of a Cruz or Rubio presidential win - we are going to see more of the same hostility toward Israel that Barack Obama massaged and smoothed over for the next Democratic presidency.

Do not be swayed by sweet words from Hillary Clinton.  As an agent of Obama, she defended Hamas against Israeli-Jewish retaliation for the years of bombings against S'derot and Ashkelon.  She enforced the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, despite the fact that they prevented Christian Copts from voting at the point of a rifle.  And she attacked Israel merely for building housing for Jews within the Jewish homeland.

Obama, of course, is not the first American president to be hostile toward either the Jewish people or the Jewish State, but he is the first to combine that hostility with open support for political Islam, an anti-Semitic genocidal political movement.

Everything is in flux at the moment and Angela Merkel, along with the idiots in Sweden and the EU, have turned Europe into a tinderbox.

Given the millions of Arab-Muslims flowing from the Middle East and North Africa into Europe, what we will see is a heavy increase in violent Jihadi activity throughout the continent and the UK - more bombings, stabbings, and murderous rage against the "infidel" - along with a slow, steady decline of the rights of women, Gay people, and the steady decline of what little Jewish population is left.

I would honestly encourage all European Jews, if they can, to move to friendlier locales, preferably in Israel, but for the moment North America and Australia are relatively safe havens, despite San Bernardino.

American "progressives" and Democrats, however, are turning against the Jewish people which accounts for the latest poll revealing that fully 30 percent of Americans support sanctions against Israel and, therefore, support the hostile Arab majority in the Middle East against the besieged Jewish minority in that part of the world.

Just as Obama sent US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to Israel in order to defend Hamas from Israeli retaliation during Operation Cast Lead, so Obama sends current Secretary of State, John Kerry, to harangue Israel about Jews who want to live in Judea and Samaria, the homeland of the Jewish people.

The Obama administration, thus, has learned nothing.

I assumed that a former president of the Harvard Law Review might be open to changing political views given additional information and alternating circumstances over time, but I was wrong.

It was clear as early as 2009 that the Obama administration was, intentionally or not, hell-bent on wrecking whatever potential may have been left in the Oslo "peace process."  By demanding that Jews be allowed to live in certain places, but not others, it forced Palestinian-Arab dictator, Mahmoud Abbas, to agree because he cannot, for his life, be seen as softer on Jews than the American president.  In fact, I wrote about this in a piece published in December of that year entitled, The End of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process.

Thus Obama threw a monkey-wrench into Oslo and then, as is Obama's tendency, blamed Israel for his own mistakes.

5 comments:

  1. In a wider sense there truly isn't that much that Israel garners from it's so called relationship with the US. Israel should dial back all relations with the US in a very big way. Little to no diplomatic, intelligence, or economic partnering. True, the VC community loves Israel but it's not enough and there's enough money laying about in the rest of the world to partner with. There are individual companies that work well with Israel, but broadly speaking there's little point.

    Let the US wave its UNSC veto. Let the EU do without Israeli technology and Israeli-Cypriot gas fields and so on. I'm sure that the US and the EU can struggle on without it.

    The future is the East. Israel needs to look to the east and kiss the US goodbye for all practical purposes. The relationship with the US shouldn't be any more material to Israel than her relationship with Mexico or Chile. There's simply not enough there beyond the outsized value we place on it. Remember this is a global world and the US and the EU are in their twilight phases. Another generation or two they will no longer be major players on the world stage just as Britain experienced after WW2. In many ways it's the West that hasn't realized that the Cold War is over, not the East. They still operate with a world view more oriented to the 1950's and '60's while it's the former Communists who are changing and have changed more. And while Israel I suppose was some sort of semi-valuable card to the West during the Cold War, those days are over, for both the West and for Israel.

    Today Israel is coordinating attacks on Hezbollah with Russia. You DO understand how momentous that is. Not the US, but Russia. Israel is now coordinating attacks on ISIS in Sinai with Egypt now. Not the US. Egypt. An Egypt that the US has also rejected.

    As America hollows itself out and morphs from a society that makes and builds things to a society of social scientist protesters proclaiming the end of petrochemicals it's less and less relevant the sweet sounding platitudes it gushes. What's the value of that to Israel? I submit it's not very much. What's the utility to Israel for an America that's entire national movement is directed at abolishing coal and oil and simultaneously focused on little more than renaming all buildings formerly named after old dead white men who had bad things to say about black people 120 years ago? Where is the locus for Israel there? There isn't. It's time to split up.

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    1. Trudy, I am going to turn your comment above into a front page post, because it deserves it.

      I often think that you overstate for rhetorical reasons, but these ideas are intriguing and - yet again from you - a little disconcerting.

      And that is not necessarily a bad thing.

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    2. The future is the East. Israel needs to look to the east and kiss the US goodbye for all practical purposes.

      You might want to check out http://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2015/11/is-china-a-friend-of-israel/

      Your comparison of the "coming" America loss leadership in the world to Britain's loss of leadership the America is completely specious. When America supplanted Britain of the leader of the international system, the only change in the international system was the identity of the leader. If America falls as the leader of the international system, everything we have come to rely on for pre-set rules arbitering disputes between nations will fall with it to be replaced by whatever suits the whims of the new leader. With China, that would be whatever curries favor with those who can provide the most benefit to China, and the Gulf oil providers can offer far more than Israel can.

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  2. Then I realized it's more of a side effect of American decline generally. Really, one or two more generations and America isn't a first rate country anymore. More like some struggling version of Britain or Mexico. I don't suppose I'll live long enough to see it but some of you will be witness to the end of America on the world's stage politically, economically, militarily, diplomatically. We'll be playing second or third chair to East Asia and one or two of the Mideast Petrocracies that survive and wind up owning most of the financial assets of the west.

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  3. As the man in the video says in his message to Obama et al: "...There is Russia, China and India...think about it".
    http://littlenotesfromparis.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/what-bibi-should-tell-obama-kerry.html
    I think that in the not too distant future Russia, China, India and Israel would make a nice 4 leafed clover :)

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