Sunday, July 5, 2009

Jewish "assurers" about Obama are in denial; Muslim assurers are chortling.

http://tinyurl.com/lbb3fh
Has Obama Turned on Israel? Settlements, rockets and Iran.By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
Many American supporters of Israel who voted for Barack Obama now suspect they may have been victims of a bait and switch. Jewish Americans voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama over John McCain in part because the Obama campaign went to great lengths to assure these voters that a President Obama would be supportive of Israel****assurances aided and abetted by liberals such as Dershowitz.**** This despite his friendships with rabidly anti-Israel characters like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and historian Rashid Khalidi.****Dersh fails to mention support from the Chicago Muslim community (black and Arab), the links between the church Obama attended for 20 years and Louis Farrakhan, and such slips even during the campaign as his statement in Iowa that "Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people." Dershowitz doth protest too much and seeks to cover his hoodwinked ass. *****...the candidate visited the beleaguered town of Sderot,...in front of the rocket shells, Mr. Obama declared: "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing." This heartfelt statement sealed the deal for many supporters of Israel.****How does Dersh distinguish between "heartfelt" and "expedient and expected?"Deshowitz admits to having been among the supporters of Obama who urged him to visit Sderot. What else would he have said?****..."President Obama's strongest supporters among Jewish leaders are deeply troubled by his recent Middle East initiatives, and some are questioning what he really believes." I hear the same thing...Are these fears justified?****Not if Dershowitz wishes to maintain the fiction that his "wisdom" was not "blindness to the obvious."**** Rhetorically, the Obama team has definitely taken a harsher approach toward Israel compared to its tone during the campaign. But has there been a change in substance about Israel's security? In answering this question, it is essential to distinguish between several aspects of American policy.****Here comes de spin!"**** First there are the settlements. The Bush administration was against expansion of West Bank settlements, but it was willing to accept a "natural growth" exception that implicitly permitted Israel to expand existing settlements in order to accommodate family growth. The Obama administration has so far shut the door on this exception.****It's clear there was a letter "deal" on the basis of which Sharon exited Gaza completely. Dershowitz should understand the common law of contracts and reciprocal breaches...plus the legal doctrine of falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus ( if you lie or renege on one thing, you can't be trusted on anything.).*****
I believe there is a logical compromise on settlement growth that has been proposed by Yousef Munayyer, a leader of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League. "Obama should make it clear to the Israelis that settlers should feel free to grow their families as long as their settlements grow vertically, and not horizontally," he wrote last month in the Boston Globe. In other words, build "up" rather than "out." This seems fair to both sides, since it would preserve the status quo for future negotiations that could lead to a demilitarized Palestinian state and Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish one -- results sought by both the Obama administratinon and Israel.****But Netanyahu already promised NOT to extend the geographical boundaries of the existing settlements, whether natural expansion occurs only vertically or vertically plus on interstitial-land should make no difference.In any case,this compromise is NOT what Hillary has said is acceptable to the Obama administration.**** A majority of American-Jewish supporters of Israel, as well as Israelis, do not favor settlement expansion.****He hasn't defined expansion to include "natural expansion" and doesn't know the fact of what he has asserted, in any event.**** Thus the Obama position on settlement expansion, whether one agrees with it or not, is not at all inconsistent with support for Israel. It may be a different position from that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it is not a difference that should matter to most Jewish voters who support both Mr. Obama and Israel.****That most liberal Jewish voters for Obama subscribe to the Kumbaya view of Middle Eastern conflict is ignored by Dershowitz.****...differences that would matter are those -- if they exist -- that directly impact Israel's security. And in terms of Israel's security, nothing presents a greater threat than Iran.The Obama administration consistently says that Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. *****But words mean nothing since it is clear that the administration has come to terms with Iranian nukes and has eschewed the only tools that might prevent it: regime change or military options. Sanctions are off the table because China and Russia will not allow gasoline to be embargoed and the EU sells a lot of it to Iran, as well. *****But prior to the current unrest in the Islamic Republic, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel frightened many supporters of Israel in May by appearing to link American efforts to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons to Israeli actions with regard to the settlements.This is a disturbing linkage that should be disavowed by the Obama administration. Opposition to a nuclear Iran -- which would endanger the entire world -- should not be dependent in any way on the issue of settlement expansion. ****Dershowitz conflates "should" with "will" and evidence indicates "no will" at all. ****...diplomacy, sanctions and other nonmilitary means...But if these tactics fail, the military option, undesirable and dangerous as it is, must not be taken off the table. If the Obama administration were to shift toward learning to live with a nuclear Iran and attempt to deny Israel the painful option of attacking its nuclear targets as a last resort, that would be troubling indeed.****Only the heedless are not troubled, long since.**** Thankfully, the Obama administration's point man on this issue, Dennis Ross, shows no signs of weakening American opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran.****Who cares? Hillary and even Joe Biden have spoken out rather emphatically against any military option, including any by the Israelis.*****...threat to Israeli security comes from Iran's proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas...range of their weapons now extends to Israel's heartland...There is no evidence of any weakening of American support for Israel's right to defend its children from the kind of rocket attacks candidate Obama commented on during his visit to Sderot.****Dershowitz knows full well that "absence of evidence" is quite different from "evidence of absence."****There may be coming changes in the Obama administration's policies that do weaken the security of the Jewish state. ...it's important to be vigilant for any signs of weakening support for Israel's security -- and to criticize forcefully any such change. But getting tough on settlement expansion should not be confused with undercutting Israel's security.****It's not confusion; it's correlation and evidence of how much the U.S. can now be trusted by Israel.****
Here's an assurance by someone who probably knows Obama a helluva lot better than Dershowitz:Arab-American Activist Says Obama Hiding Anti-Israel Stance by Gil Ronen...presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama is currently hiding his anti-Israel views in order to get elected, according to a well-known anti-Israel activist..., Ali Abunimah, claimed to know Obama well and to have met him on numerous occasions at pro-Palestinian events in Chicago....for the anti-Israeli website Electronic Intifada, Abunimah wrote:"The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing....He responded warmly, and volunteered,'Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race.'I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.' He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy [and said:] 'Keep up the good work!'"...Abunimah's report included a photo of Obama with his wife Michelle seated at a table with virulently anti-Israeli Professor Edward Said and his wife Mariam, in what Abunimah said was a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Said gave the keynote speech....for the leftist radio show "Democracy Now!," ...Abunimah said he knew Obama for many years as his state senator "when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time.""I remember personally introducing him onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank," he recounted. "And that's just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation."..."In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor **(Rashid Khalidi)**. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict." "Obama's about-face is not surprising," Abunimah wrote. "He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power." When Obama first ran for the Senate in 2004, the Chicago Jewish News interviewed him on his stance regarding Israel's security fence. He accused the Bush administration of neglecting the "Israeli-Palestinian" situation and criticized the security fence built by Israel to prevent terror attacks: "The creation of a wall dividing the two nations is yet another example of the neglect of this Administration in brokering peace," Obama was quoted as saying.

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