We heard a lot about Barack Obama's "charm offensive" to woo his Jewish supporters back into the fold after having dissed Israel and P.M. Bibi Netanyahu a few months back. As readers will recall, following the infamous visit of Joe Biden to Israel during which officials announced the approval of permits to build 1200 or so residential units in Ramat Shlomo, a Jerusalem neighborhood, the Obama Administration "condemned" Israel for daring to build housing in its own capital. Shortly thereafter, Obama reportedly left Bibi to stew alone in the White House while The One dined upstairs with his family, apparently to punish him for daring to stand up for his own country (a behavior that is apparently foreign to our Dear Leader).
Since the cumulative effect of this was agitation and disillusionment among even pro-Obama Jews, the president and his team mounted a campaign to try to convince Jewish supporters that Obama would never sacrifice Israel's security interests, Heaven forbid. They hosted something called Jewish Heritage Week at the White House (which would have gone unnoticed but for the fact that it served as the backdrop for Helen Thomas' career-ending anti-Jewish tirade); held numerous meetings with members of the "Israel Lobby" (as Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer refer to pro-Israel Jews and Christians); and even distanced itself from J Street, the leftist lobbying group that pretends to love Israel so much it takes up the cause of the Palestinians who want to destroy her. The administration even kept public pressure against Israel at a low simmer, lest they betray the president's deeply held commitment to Israel's demilitarization, denuclearization and de-Judaization.
Not that any of this for a moment fooled anyone. Obama-loving Jews needed no such campaign to restore their belief in Obama since they hadn't lost it to begin with. It is an article of faith with them that "loving" Israel means America dragging them kicking and screaming to the bargaining table with the Arabs or better yet imposing on Israel a solution to the conflict "for the sake of peace." This Time magazine article by Peter Beinart is the latest and best example of enlightened opinion from those who want only what's best for Israel, regardless of what Israel thinks is best for her.
Jews who never supported Obama and even some of those who did but had already come to see that he is more antagonistic towards Israel than any president since...well, ever...weren't taken in by the charm campaign either. It was simply a matter of time before Obama's default animosity toward Israel would shine through in policy if not rhetoric. Sure enough, the Freedom Flotilla incident the other week offered just such an opportunity to test Obama's commitment to Israel's security.
I need not amplify here the details of Israel's engagement with the Turkish-sponsored mini-flotilla which attempted to break Israel's (and Egypt's) arms blockade of Gaza. Countless articles and videos have been forwarded by yours truly on the subject. Suffice it to say that Israel's actions, justifiable in its premises if not perfect in its execution, has created a public relations nightmare for the Jewish State amid a firestorm of elite criticism and public Israel-bashing.
At first the Obama administration kept its mouth shut, which under the previous administration would have been construed as a breach of faith with Israel but under this crowd passes for a stoic portrayal of studied detachment. As time went by, though, the Obamites could no longer restrain themselves. This past week Obama met with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas (from Fatah, the "good" terrorists who run the West Bank)) and opined that the world needs to "help" Israel find a friendlier, more relaxed way of protecting its security interests than the meddlesome arms embargo against Gaza. "The situation is unsustainable," said Obama, using his favorite term for anything that needs "fundamental change." In the spirit of letting no crisis go to waste, the administration wants to turn the "tragedy" of Israel's raid into an opportunity to impose on Israel a new "conceptual framework" for protecting itself.
As proof of his intention to make sure that the days of U.S. serving as an "honest broker" in the Middle East are over, Obama doled out $400 million in Obama Money (courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer) to the Palestinian leader, officially earmarked for infrastructure projects in Gaza and the West Bank but undoubtedly headed straight into the pockets of the thieves, murderers and apparatchiks who run Fatah and Hamas.
In another bid to weaken the blockade, which Egypt also maintains to protect itself from the fundamentalist regime in Gaza, the American administration has refused to send a half billion dollars to Egypt for the purpose of building a steel anti-smuggling wall between Egypt and Gaza, apparently at the behest of Israel's newest enemy, Turkey. The U.S., Debkafile.com reports, is focusing on undermining the Netanyahu government's legitimacy in an effort to appease Turkey and its Islamic government. The president's sweet words and toothy smiles for Israel, its leaders and its supporters have been replaced with bared teeth and veiled threats, in the Chicago style of doing business.
And finally comes word of a new and dangerous development in Israel-America relations. Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard reports that the U.S. is about to sign on to an anti-Israel resolution in the U.N. next week calling for an "independent" commission under U.N. auspices to look into Israel's behavior regarding the "freedom" flotilla. According to Kristol:
The White House has apparently shrugged off concerns from elsewhere in the U.S. government that a) this is an extraordinary singling out of Israel, since all kinds of much worse incidents happen around the world without spurring UN investigations; b) that the investigation will be one-sided, focusing entirely on Israeli behavior and not on Turkey or on Hamas; and c) that this sets a terrible precedent for outside investigations of incidents involving U.S. troops or intelligence operatives as we conduct our own war on terror.
It should be noted that the White House has angrily and categorically denied Kristol's claim that the U.S. intends to back such a resolution, and admits that doing so would indeed be unprecedented. Indeed, delivering Israel to the tender mercies of the U.N., which never met an anti-Israel resolution it didn't like, would be a faithless betrayal the U.S.'s greatest ally and the only democracy in the Middle East. It would be the equivalent of filing divorce papers against a loyal and loving spouse.
Let us hope that such an action is beyond the pale even for this White House. But either way, it appears that the "charm offensive" to win back Jewish supporters is over, and what has taken its place is, frankly, just offensive.
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