By EARL COX, JPOST—
Now that Barack Obama has been re-elected and sworn in to serve another term as President of the United States, this question is appropriate. Is Mr. Obama good for Israel? According to election exit polls, about 75 percent of American Jews voted for President Obama. They seem to believe that he is good for Israel. Many of them are hard-core liberal Democrats who would never vote conservative or Republican. Despite the mountain of evidence that shows Mr. Obama’s hostility toward Israel and toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, those American Jews chose to believe Mr. Obama’s positive sounding statements on Israel while ignoring his negative actions. One thing is for certain, based on my extensive conversations with many Israeli Jews living throughout Israel, they do not agree with their brothers and sisters in America. American Jews living in Israel voted over whelmingly against Mr. Obama.
How can the American Jewish community disregard Mr. Obama’s “naivete” in regard to the Middle East and his contempt for Israel and for Netanyahu? Two years ago Mr. Obama first met with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House in Washington. The president’s treatment of the leader of one of America’s closest friendly nations was deplorable. Prime Minister Netanyahu was quietly led into the White House through a side door and he was treated more like a stranger than a friend. There was no media attention and no photo-op. However, when Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas visited the White House shortly afterward, he was treated as an honored guest with photo ops and a smiling president giving him one hundred million dollars of hard-earned American taxpayer dollars.
Then you have to remember when Mr. Obama made good on a campaign promise “to give a major address to Muslims from a Muslim capital.” In that speech in Cairo, Egypt his stated objective was to repair ties that were supposedly severely damaged under his predecessor George W. Bush. For the record, we all know that those ties were severely damaged when 19 Middle East Muslim terrorists turned jet planes into missiles killing 3,000 Americans.
Mr. Obama also stated in that speech that “there have been times when America has shown arrogance.” The problem with Mr. Obama’s speech was his naivete to think that Muslim anger toward the U.S. was because of President Bush or American arrogance. He obviously failed to understand that the issue is not American arrogance but Muslim religious fanaticism.
Recently on U.S. television Mr. Obama stated that “Israel is one of our closest allies in the Middle East.” Based on my observations, Israel is America’s ONLY true friend and ally in the Middle East. Israel is the only country in the Middle East which shares our same democratic values and Israel is definitely America’s only trustworthy ally in the region. All the surrounding Arab countries are Muslim who consider the U.S. to be the “Great Satan” and their supposedly holy Koran instructs them to hate and kill Americans yet somehow President Obama considers them to be close allies.
And remember the G20 summit last year in Paris when French President Sarkozy “privately” said to Mr. Obama being unaware that his mike was still on, “I cannot bear Netanyahu.” And Mr. Obama responded, “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him more than you do.” It is also important to recall when recently Prime Minister Netanyahu announced plans to build new Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria and Mr. Obama commented, “Israel doesn’t even know what its own best interests are” to which Prime Minister Netanyahu responded, “Over the past four years Israel has withstood tremendous diplomatic pressure from the White House. They insisted that we curb our demand for action on Iran, that we withdraw back to the 1967 border lines, that we divide Jerusalem, and that we stop building in Judea and Samaria. Only the people of Israel will determine what best represents the State of Israel’s vital interests.”
President Obama has repeatedly called for Israel to implement “a two-state solution” and to return to the suicidal borders of 1967. The realities are that the Palestinians don’t want a two-state solution and there were no defined borders in 1967. There was no peace treaty and no border agreements then or since. None of the Arab nations have recognized Israel as a state with any borders. Israel legitimately gained the territories of Judea and Samaria in a legitimate war victory. So the many Jewish communities, or so-called settlements, constructed in Arab occupied Judea and Samaria, the so-called West Bank, are on legitimate Jewish property.
When Jordan attacked Israel in the 1967 Six-Day-War, Israeli military forces pushed Jordanian forces out of Judea and Samaria and back across the Jordan River. Why should Israel have to give that war-gained land back for nothing and be left with only a ten-mile wide territory along the Mediterranean coast, just because Mr. Obama wants it that way? Now, incomprehensibly, President Obama is providing Egypt, which is governed by the Muslim Brotherhood, with 20 fighter jets. In light of the fact that Egypt has broken their treaty with Israel, and with tensions in Egypt so high among its own population, this seems a very foolish move and one which surely signals to the Muslim-Arab Middle East that Obama stands clearly on the side of Egypt’s President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. With Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in control of Egypt, it is for certain that Egypt is not an ally of America. The war planes Obama is sending to Egypt will be delivered this year and are reportedly in fulfillment of an agreement made with Mubarak who upheld Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel and who was considered an ally of America. Now that everything has changed, it seems a very troublesome move especially should a conflict erupt between Israel and Egypt. True allies cannot be purchased. A true ally of America is one which shares our core beliefs and values which clearly Egypt does not. When you add it all up, it just MAY be that President Obama is indeed the most anti-Israel president in the history of the United States. May G-d help us.