117 Days to Go

Obama Blows It – Big Time

By Sherwin Pomerantz

With 117 days to go until the United Nations General Assembly convenes in New York, President Obama on Thursday successfully pulled the rug out from under the Prime Minister of Israel while the Prime Minister was in flight and scheduled to meet with President Obama this morning. Some way to treat an ally, was it not?

President Obama accomplished two things in the portion of his speech dealing with Israel and the Palestinians which came, interestingly enough, at the tail end of a 35 minute oration on America’s desire to be loved by the Muslim world. He publicly proclaimed his bias against Israel and in favor of Palestinian demands, and he set preconditions for the negotiations, pre-empting our right to negotiate on our own behalf on some of the most critical issues facing our government.

The President’s newly articulated position puts unreasonable public pressure on Israel in what should be a negotiated process conducted behind closed doors. For sure the issues on which a lasting peace, if it can be built at all, are extremely complicated. But the President has taken sides publicly and blocked Israel’s right to negotiate on these issues without preconditions.

In this round of blogs I have repeatedly emphasized that Israel is the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people and, by inference, the realization of the Zionist dream. Both of those words, legitimate and Zionist seem to make a lot of people uncomfortable these days, many of whom are Jewish themselves. Why this is so impacts directly on the President’s words on Thursday.

The dictionary defines legitimate as (a) being in compliance with the law or lawful as in a legitimate business; (b) being in accord with established or accepted patterns and standards such as using legitimate advertising practices; (c) based on logical reasoning or reasonable as in a legitimate solution to the problem; and (d) authentic or genuine, for example referring to a legitimate complaint. Israel’s creation, of course, having come as a result of a UN resolution to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into two parts, one Jewish and one Arab, gave the Jewish Agency, acting in the name of the Jewish people, the legitimate right to declare Israel’s independence as a free and democratic country in the community of nations.

As for Zionism, dictionaries correctly describe this as a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. This was and remains the prime objective of those who came here from all over the world to live and work and remains, to this day, the mission statement of Israel itself.

Therefore, as uncomfortable as the words might make some people, the fact is that this little country at the eastern end of the Mediterranean is, in fact, the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people and the realization of the Zionist dream. And that seems to be what “bugs” the heck out of President Obama. How much easier it would be for him to move forward with his agenda of Arab appeasement, if we were not legitimate. (A different blog will deal with whether the Palestinian people can be called legitimate under these definitions.)

But because there is no question of the legitimate creation of the State of Israel there is no choice left to him in moving forward with his agenda of appeasement, but to attempt to whittle away what we do have here in order to demonstrate to his Arab audience that he really will exert no favoritism towards either Jews or Israel, and he has proven that to us once again last night. After stating unequivocally that “ultimately, it is up to Israelis and Palestinians to take action” on a peace initiative, he came down firmly on the side of the Palestinian demand for a return by Israel to its 1967 borders “with mutually agreed land swaps”. In doing so, he pre-empted one of Israel’s key negotiating cards and essentially took it off the table.

The President assured the world that, “Our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable. And we will stand against attempts to single it out for criticism in international forums.” And he acknowledged that "Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist". But he immediately went on to say with equal vehemence that “the Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.” Well my friends, look closely at the map of Israel and where the West Bank and Gaza sit. The only way to connect those two parcels of land and create contiguity is to create a safe passage between the two which would, in effect, cut Israel in two. But, I guess we could live without contiguity couldn’t we?

He went on to refer to the difficulties posed by “the recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas”. He failed, however, to mention that Hamas is number 12 on the US State Department’s List of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO). The State Department further specifies that “it is unlawful for a person in the United States or subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to knowingly provide ‘material support or resources’ to a designated FTO”. It is illegal for Americans to negotiate with an organization on the FTO list, but the President’s speech implies that he is nevertheless prepared to demand that Israel do so, even though he is fully aware that the publicly state goal of Hamas is to eliminate Israel.

Needless to say, in spite of all of this, the Arab press this morning was generally critical of the President for being too soft on Israel. Clearly they would have been happier if he had agreed to sign on to the Hamas charter and its principles.

Jews everywhere must understand and make known that they understand that this is, indeed, the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people and the manifestation of the Zionist dream. Our enemies draw their strength from their perception that we, ourselves, do not believe this to the maximum and our lack of faith in that statement gives them strength. We dare not give them that victory.