Jerusalem Post editor blasts Obama on Netanyahu eve

 

President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu have not had the warmest of relationships.

A deputy editor for the Jerusalem Post has written a scathing editorial accusing the Obama administration of engaging in a concerted effort to enable Israel’s enemies, especially Iran in its drive to obtain nuclear weapons.

The article, “In Israel’s Hour of Need,” by Caroline Glick comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to appear Tuesday before a joint session of Congress to discuss the looming Iranian nuclear threat. Netanyahu was invited by House Speaker John Boehner, bypassing the president, which some Democrats said was a breach of protocol. Some even promised to boycott Netanyahu’s speech.

Politics aside, there’s a sense that time is running out for Israel and that Obama’s negotiations with Iran will allow a nuclear arsenal at the fingertips of Iran’s mullahs. That’s the one result Netanyahu has consistently said Israel cannot accept. Glick portrays Netanyahu as a leader who has carefully picked his battles with a hostile U.S. president.

Glick, a U.S. born and educated journalist, immigrated to Israel in 1991 and joined the Israel Defense Forces. She served as an assistant foreign policy adviser to Netanyahu during his first term in the 1990s. As a conservative journalist, she has been an observer of Middle Eastern politics for over two decades and authored several books, including the 2014 tome “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.”

Caroline Glick was born and raised in the Chicago area and became an Israeli citizen as a young adult. She is now a noted author and newspaper editor.

In her editorial, she lays out the long track record of anti-Israel positions taken by the Obama administration and how Netanyahu has accommodated Obama at almost every turn.

“In recent years he (Netanyahu) released terrorist murderers from prison. He abrogated Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. He agreed to support the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. He agreed to keep giving the Palestinians of Gaza free electricity while they waged war against Israel. He did all of these things in a bid to accommodate U.S. President Barack Obama and win over the media, while keeping the leftist parties in his coalitions happy,” Glick writes.

“For his part, for the past six years Obama has undermined Israel’s national security. He has publicly humiliated Netanyahu repeatedly,” she writes.

“He has delegitimized Israel’s very existence, embracing the jihadist lie that Israel’s existence is the product of post-Holocaust European guilt rather than 4,000 years of Jewish history.

“Last summer, Obama openly colluded with Hamas’s terrorist war against Israel. He tried to coerce Israel into accepting ceasefire terms that would have amounted to an unconditional surrender to Hamas’s demands for open borders and the free flow of funds to the terrorist group. He enacted a partial arms embargo on Israel in the midst of war. He cut off air traffic to Ben-Gurion International Airport under specious and grossly prejudicial terms in an open act of economic warfare against Israel.

And yet, Glick says, despite Obama’s scandalous treatment of Israel, Netanyahu has continued to paper over differences in public and thank Obama for the little his has done on Israel’s behalf.

Obama’s policies that are hostile to Israel are not limited to his unconditional support for the Palestinians in their campaign against Israel. Obama shocked the entire Israeli defense community when he supported the overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, despite Mubarak’s dependability as a U.S. ally in the war on Islamist terrorism, and as the guardian of both Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel and the safety and freedom of maritime traffic in the Suez Canal.

Obama supported Mubarak’s overthrow despite the fact that the only political force in Egypt capable of replacing him was the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks the destruction of Israel and is the ideological home and spawning ground of jihadist terrorist groups, including al-Qaida and Hamas. Obama then supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s regime even as then-president Mohamed Morsi took concrete steps to transform Egypt into an Islamist, jihadist state and end Egypt’s peace with Israel.

Israelis were united in our opposition to Obama’s behavior. But Netanyahu said nothing publicly in criticism of Obama’s destructive, dangerous policy.

He held his tongue in the hopes of winning Obama over through quiet diplomacy.

Netanyahu sees all of Obama’s anti-Israel policies as reversible, and so he has taken a position that it’s better to wait him out than make a strong show of opposition, all except for one issue – Iran’s dream of obtaining nuclear arms. Allowing Iran to go nuclear is non-reversible and cannot be tolerated in Netanyahu’s mind.

Iran is not only on the cusp of obtaining nuclear capability but also has advanced missile delivery systems.

“An Iran in possession of a nuclear arsenal is an Iran that can not only destroy Israel with just one or two warheads. It can make it impossible for Israel to respond to conventional aggression carried out by terrorist forces and others operating under an Iranian nuclear umbrella,” Glick writes.

Glick says Obama’s policies have empowered Iran to take over large portions of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. And the verbal assaults never stop.

“Wednesday National Security Adviser Susan Rice accused Netanyahu of destroying U.S. relations with Israel. Secretary of State John Kerry effectively called him a serial alarmist, liar, and warmonger,” Glick reported.

“Whereas Israel can survive Obama on the Palestinian front by stalling, waiting him out and placating him where possible, and can even survive his support for Hamas by making common cause with the Egyptian military and the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, the damage Obama’s intended deal with Iran will cause Israel will be irreversible. The moment that Obama grants Iran a path to a nuclear arsenal – and the terms of the agreement that Obama has offered Iran grant Iran an unimpeded path to nuclear power – a future U.S. administration will be hard-pressed to put the genie back in the bottle.”

Yuli Edelstein, speaker of the Israeli Knesset, is also laying the groundwork for Netanyahu’s speech before Congress. Writing an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times this week, Edelstein said the time is now to make a last stand against Iranian nukes. He writes:

We have a historic opportunity to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program; unfortunately, the agreement taking shape falls short of what we can achieve. The proposed deal would place limits on Iran’s nuclear program but will not eliminate it or even, in the long term, contain it. And though Iran would be subject to rigorous international inspections, it has never been forthcoming on its nuclear program — not even during the current round of negotiations, as a recent International Atomic Energy Agency report makes clear.

Netanyahu is not coming to Washington Tuesday to warn Congress against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran simply because he seeks a fight with Obama, according to Glick.

“Netanyahu has devoted the last six years to avoiding a fight with Obama, often at great cost to Israel’s national security and to his own political position,” she writes. “Netanyahu is coming to Washington next week because Obama has left him no choice. And all decent people of good will should support him, and those who do not, and those who are silent, should be called out for their treachery and cowardice.”

There have been rumors circulating in Washington that the Congressional Black Caucus might get up and walk out in the middle of Netanyahu’s speech Tuesday. Other Democrats, such as Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., and Betty McCollum, D-Minn., have said they won’t show up for Netanyahu’s speech. McCollum penned an op-ed in the Washington Post Thursday accusing the Israeli prime minister of not showing enough respect for Obama by “going behind the back” of a friendly country’s president to schedule the appearance.

But Glick’s article makes the point that it is Obama’s actions that expose his administration as having steered America off the path of being a “friendly country” to Israel.

Edelstein says in his Los Angeles Times column that he has faith that the majority of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress remain strongly supportive of Israel and will want to hear Netanyahu’s perspective on Iran.

“In fact, they view the prime minister’s speech as an opportunity to hear an important viewpoint that can make a positive contribution to a matter of global importance,” he wrote.

“The speech on Tuesday is not just about Iran’s nuclear race and it is not just about Israel. It is about whether we, as free people committed to democratic ideals, are still capable of standing together and resisting the temptation to compromise and appease our foes. With an agreement due within the month, we must rally together now to fight this evil in all its guises.

“Our mutual enemy is still working away,” Edelstein added. “We have an opportunity to stop him. Let’s not squander it.”

Jerusalem Post editor blasts Obama on Netanyahu eve
Leo Hohmann
Sun, 01 Mar 2015 19:52:00 GMT