Obama Was Right: Time For Israel To Put "Daylight" Between Itself and US -- To Preserve Credibility and Security

Last year, in the midst of the Iran negotiations that Israel so strenuously opposed, Kerry came out with the claim that not only was the Iran deal actually in Israel's interest, but that continued Israeli opposition to the Iran deal would further isolate her. But increasingly, the more pressing question is not so much whether Israeli  is really isolated from other countries, but rather whether the time has come for Israel to distance itself more from the United States.

Brett Stephens writes that Israel Looks Beyond America -- and is doing so very successfully:

Does Obama Have A Messaging Problem With American Jews--Or Are They Hearing Him Loud And Clear?

Dan Senor, co-author with Saul Singer of "Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle" explains Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote. It is more than an issue of a "messaging problem" or someone going around distorting what Obama is saying.

If Obama is actually serious about recovering the Jewish vote, he should look at the examples Senor provides of where Obama sent a clear negative message to the Jewish community all on his own.

Here are some of the examples Senor gives:

Will Obama Allow A Palestinian State To Be Another Lebanon?

The unfortunate truth is that Lebanon is no longer an independent and Western-leaning state, but a terrorist stronghold supplied by Syria and subservient to Iran.
Michael Oren

I vaguely recall many years ago that terrorist leader Arafat pointed to Lebanon as the model of what Arabs and Jews could join together to become. Of course, as the years passed and the schism and animosity of the Christians and Arabs grew to the point that the Lebanon of old is only a memory--we do indeed see a reflection of what has developed between Israel and the Arabs who claim that all they want is to create a state.

"Why I Love Barack Obama"

Why I Love Barack Obama

by Yishai Fleisher

The writer just loves Obama because he is good for Israel and good for the USA. Read on, things are seldom what they seem.

I love President Obama. I just love the guy. And with every mean thing that he does to Israel I love him even more.

Why? Well, I will give you two reasons why Obama is good for Israel, and one why he is good for America.

Obama vs. Israel? Let The Spin Begin! (Updated)

The Obama administration has started a major PR pushback, intended to reassure the Jewish community--and Congress--that there is nothing to all those stories about friction, and worse, between Obama and Netanyahu.

In W.H. launches Israel P.R. offensive, Laura Rozen recounts what has gone into the PR blitz so far--

Former Advisor To 6 Secretaries Of State: Fixing Arab-Israel Conflict Won't Fix The Middle East

In February 2009, I wrote: Obama Being Advised To Pursue A Minimalist Approach In Israel-Palestinian Conflict.

One of those advisors was Aaron David Miller:

Aaron David Miller, who recently wrote a piece for Newsweek entitled If Obama Is Serious
He should get tough with Israel. He was an advisor to 6 different Secretaries of State from 1978-2003.

According to Miller:

"This region, as best I can understand it, hates big ideas. Particularly those big ideas imposed, crafted or orchestrated from outside. And frankly, transformative diplomacy was the essence of the previous administration's approach to this region. Regime change, democratization, grand bargains, grand rhetoric, one-size-fits-all," he said.

Instead, Miller called for "transactional diplomacy" based on small, pragmatic steps like getting Israel to open up Gaza for reconstruction efforts. Miller said President Obama should save his "big ideas" for dealing with the economic crisis in the United States, and take small, incremental steps in the Middle East.

Now in The False Religion of Mideast Peace: And why I'm no longer A Believer, Aaron David Miller has moved has distanced himself completely from the idea that the peace process is the key to the Middle East:

Obama, Remind Us Again Who Is Costing US "Blood And Treasure"

From The Wall Street Journal:

For all the current talk about Israel costing America lives and treasure, the striking fact is that the U.S. has never had to go to war to defend the Jewish state. This is more than can be said for Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Bosnia, Kosovo and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. That's because for 62 years Israelis have provided for their own defense, in an alliance with the U.S. that has reflected American values and—in both the Cold War and the war on terror—advanced American interests.

Secret Memorandum Confirms Obama's Lack Of A Plan In The Middle East

The Foreign Policy's blog The Cable revealed earlier this month the lack of a clear policy towards Israel in the Obama administration:

Although the public fireworks between top U.S. and Israeli officials may have died down in recent days, a fully fledged debate has erupted inside the Obama administration over how to best bring Middle East peace talks to fruition, let alone a successful conclusion.

Some reports have suggested there are two camps within Obamaland -- one favoring an incremental approach focused on persuading the Israelis and Palestinians to return to negotiations, and a second group pushing the president to lay his own "American plan" on the table.

But one U.S. official close to the issue told The Cable there's a more diverse spectrum of opinion inside the administration, with different officials exhibiting a range of views on what the tactics and tone of the U.S. approach should be going forward.

Now the New York Times reveals a secret memorandum that indicates the Obama administration is not so clear on how to handle Iran either:

Gates Says U.S. Lacks Policy to Curb Iran’s Nuclear Drive 

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document.

Several officials said the highly classified analysis, written in January to President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, came in the midst of an intensifying effort inside the Pentagon, the White House and the intelligence agencies to develop new options for Mr. Obama. They include a set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course.

...Mr. Gates’s memo appears to reflect concerns in the Pentagon and the military that the White House did not have a well prepared series of alternatives in place in case all the diplomatic steps finally failed. Separately, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote a “chairman’s guidance” to his staff in December conveying a sense of urgency about contingency planning. He cautioned that a military attack would have “limited results,” but he did not convey any warnings about policy shortcomings.

Keep in mind the memorandum was written in January--and Obama's deadline to Iran to stop pursuing nuclear power was December 2009.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Obama And Iran

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Legal Insurrection notes the trail that Obama has consistently followed with Iran:

From the campaign promise of negotiations without precondition, to the near silence when Iran erupted with protests last June over election fraud, to the setting of meaningless deadlines, to the false crisis with Israel over East Jerusalem, to the apology tours, at every step this administration has sent the wrong messages to Iran and the world.

Enter Obama, Master of Realpolitik

The New York Times has what appears to be the money quote of Obama's newly articulated policy in the Middle East and towards Israel:

Mr. Obama said conflicts like the one in the Middle East ended up “costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure” — drawing an explicit link between the Israeli-Palestinian strife and the safety of American soldiers as they battle Islamic extremism and terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The full transcript of Obama's press conference can be found here.

This is supposed to be a reflection of a new approach--a pragmatic approach that takes a more realistic view of the situation in the  Middle East and how it affects US interests.

At least that is the way that Peter Berger wrote in an article for The New York Times:

Obama's Oxymoron-Building Measures In The Middle East

Does anyone else think this sounds odd--

U.S. President Barack Obama has told French President Nicolas Sarkozy that he is determined to keep the pressure on Israel and the Palestinians to renew peace talks and implement confidence-building measures. Obama made his comments despite potential political damage at home ahead of the mid-term congressional elections in November.

A Real Poll--For Those Who Insist On Using Unnamed Polls About Prospects For Peace In the Middle East

From an interview then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had with Cal Thomas back in October 2006:

QUESTION: I'd like to know what evidence you have — I read, and I know you do and a lot more than I do, the sermons, the editorials in the Middle East, the right of return idea, which a lot of people think is just basically overwhelming for a Jewish population with millions and millions of Arabs in the so-called Diaspora. What evidence do you have that teaching their schoolchildren at the ages of four and five to be martyrs, to show up in their little uniforms with plastic guns and their headbands, textbooks one grenade plus two grenades equals, you know, three grenades — what evidence do you have out there that if they had an independent state that they would lay down their arms and not complete the mission of killing the Jews and throwing them out?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, you can look at any opinion poll in the Palestinian territories and 70 percent of the people will say they're perfectly ready to live side by side with Israel because they just want to live in peace. And when it comes right down to it, yeah, there are plenty of extremists in the Palestinian territories who are not going to be easily dealt with. They have to be dealt with — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories — they're terrorists and they have to be dealt with as terrorists. [emphasis added]

As far as I know, Rice never did reveal the name of any poll reflecting that magical 70% of Palestinians "perfectly ready" to live in peace with Israel.

On the contrary, a Pew Research Center Poll in 2007 gave a different 70%:

Open Letter Tomorrow Will Address Obama On His Feud With Israel

From One Jerusalem:

In an unprecedented open letter to President Obama, Ronald Lauder, the President of the World Jewish Congress asks the President to stop his public feud with the State of Israel and start dealing with real issues like a nuclear Iran.

In a letter that will be published tomorrow in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, Mr. Lauder takes the bold step of standing up for Israel and the Jewish people. With tension growing between the Obama White House and the government of Israel, this is the first time the World Jewish Congress has publicly challenged the conduct of American foreign policy toward Israel. The concerns and questions raised in Mr. Lauder's letter represent a respectful, but very troubling, expression of anxiety about the diplomatic confrontation the Obama Administration seems set on seeking with Israel.

The World Jewish Congress' unprecedented decision to "go public" with its concerns about the Obama Administration indicates that growing friction between the Obama Administration and Israel continues to cause real anxiety in the Jewish community. This is in line with the soon to be released McLaughlin poll which shows that among Jews who originally voted for Obama only 42% would vote for him again.

Much media speculation here and in Israel has focused on how strained relations with the Obama Administration will impact politics in Israel. The letter from Mr. Lauder and the World Jewish Congress suggests that President Obama may feel political pressure here at home if he continues his public feud with Israel.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Ronald Lauder.

It's Not Too Late For Obama To Adjust His Course In The Middle East

Michael Totten writes about the growing situation in the Middle East--and how it differes from what Bush faced during his presidency:

If Obama’s squishy policies are misguided, as I think they are, it’s less obvious. The Middle East isn’t on fire as it was circa 2005. But it should be apparent that, at some point, all the pressure that’s building up will have to go somewhere. When and how is anyone’s guess, but there’s little chance it’s just going to dissipate or be slowly released during peace talks

4 Benefits Of Bad Relations Between Israel And The US

In The Solace of Poor U.S.-Israel Relations, Daniel Pipes suggests that the admittedly strained relationship between the US and Israel that we are now seeing has its benefits:

In short.

1.) Diplomatic negotiations through the 1990s led to a parade of Israeli retreats that had the perverse effect of turning the middling-bad situation of 1993 into the awful one of 2000. Painful Israeli concessions, we now know, stimulate not reciprocal Palestinian goodwill but rather irredentism, ambition, fury, and violence.

More On The Increased Support For Israel Among Republicans--And Not Democrats

Jeff Jacoby writes about the February Gallup poll that indicates that support for Israel in the US is still strong--and notes the what else can be gleaned from the numbers:

But look at the disparity that emerges when those results are sorted by party affiliation. While support for Israel vs. the Palestinians has climbed to a stratospheric 85 percent among Republicans, the comparable figure for Democrats is an anemic 48 percent. (It was 60 percent for independents.) And behind Israel’s “Top 5’’ favorability rating lies a gaping partisan rift: 80 percent of Republicans — but just 53 percent of Democrats — have positive feelings about the world’s only Jewish country.

The Only Thing Scarier Than An Obama Plan For Israel Is That He May Have No Plan At All

Last month, Laura Rozen wrote at Politico:

Sources say within the inter-agency process, White House Middle East strategist Dennis Ross is staking out a position that Washington needs to be sensitive to Netanyahu’s domestic political constraints including over the issue of building in East Jerusalem in order to not raise new Arab demands, while other officials including some aligned with Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell are arguing Washington needs to hold firm in pressing Netanyahu for written commitments to avoid provocations that imperil Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and to preserve the Obama administration’s credibility. …

“He [Ross] seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu’s coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” one U.S. official told POLITICO Saturday. “And he doesn’t seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this Administration.”

What some saw as the suggestion of dual loyalties shows how heated the debate has become.

At the time, Noah Pollak wrote about 3 things that could be learned from Rozen's report, the first being:

The administration has essentially been winging it, at least on the details. If senior officials are just now debating how to handle the crisis, it means that there wasn’t a particularly coherent or well-considered strategy in the first place — just a generalized desire to knock the Israelis around. Smart power.

Brzezinski: Mideast Peace Requires Obama To Fill Sadat's Role--Forget About Abbas!

I know Brzezinski he's not one of my key advisors. I've had lunch with him once, I've exchanged emails with him maybe 3 times...I do not share his views with respect to Israel. I have said so clearly and unequivocally.
Obama, February 25, 2008

On Friday, Laura Rozen wrote on Politico:

Reports in The Washington Post and The New York Times this week said former U.S. national security advisers Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Sandy Berger met with Jones in the White House last month and recommended that the U.S. advance stalled peace talks by proposing its own peace proposal. President Barack Obama attended part of the meeting and listened to the proposal, the reports said.

Now it looks like Mr. Brzezinski has decided to launch a trial balloon on Obama's behalf in an opinion piece, written with Stephen Solarz, appearing in today's Washington Post: To achieve Mideast peace, Obama must make a bold Mideast trip.

But there is something jarring in how Brzezinski and Solarz undercut their own position.

Now Obama Wants To Impose His Version Of Peace On Israel Against It's Will And With No Say

I don't know how you can force 2 sides to sit down and live in peace, but then again--I don't have the years of experience that Obama has in such matters.

Oh, wait...

In any case, Jennifer Rubin does have a good question: How Do You Impose Peace?

The most famous attempt to impose peace was at the Treaty of Versailles after WWI--and one of the key ingredients was to demilitarize Germany. Of course, that was then: this is now. These days, one of the key ingredients to create peace is to give arms to the Palestinian Arabs and train them on how to use them--ideally on other Arab Palestinians.

Ideally--but not necessarily. Last year Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, who is training the Palestinian Arabs, spoke to the 2009 Soref Symposium organized by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Robert Dreyfuss, a blogger for The Nation wrote in US General Builds A Palestinian Army:

Recognizing that by organizing and training thousands of Palestinian troops, professionally led, he is creating in effect a nationalist army, Dayton warned the 500 or so WINEP listeners that the troops can only be strung along for just so long. "With big expectations, come big risks," said Dayton. "There is perhaps a two-year shelf life on being told that you're creating a state, when you're not." To my ears, at least, his subtle warning is that if concrete progress isn't made toward a Palestinian state, the very troops Dayton is assembling could rebel.

The Real Reason Obama Will Never Hit It Off With Netanyahu

From the National Review feature: Krauthammer's Take:

On Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week:

We have already had a year delay in talks because of Obama interjecting the settlement issue in the first place.

Remember, for 17 years the Palestinians and Israelis negotiated, ever since Oslo, directly in the absence of a freeze in settlements. Palestinians never demanded it as a precondition.

In comes Obama, and he demands a freeze of settlements.