Facts are Stubborn Things …The
Truth About Obama and Israel
By Sherwin Pomerantz
Haim Saban, the Chairman of California’s Univision and a
native Israeli, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times entitled “The Truth
About Obama and Israel” which he ends with his commitment to vote for the
president once again this November. His
reasons, in his words along with my comments in italics are:
Even though he could have done a better job
highlighting his friendship for Israel, there’s no denying that by every tangible
measure, his support for Israel’s security and well-being has been rock solid. In July, he provided an additional $70
million to extend the Iron Dome system across southern Israel. That’s in
addition to the $3 billion in annual military assistance to Israel that the
president requests and that Congress routinely approves, assistance for which
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed deep personal appreciation.
All true but, of course, that $3 billion in annual
assistance by the U.S. to Israel is not unique to the Obama
administration. This number has been
around for the last 37 years although over the last 20 years the balance has
shifted away from economic aid and more to military aid. This shift began in 2007 during the Bush
administration and is simply a continuation of the policy which has been in
effect for some time.
Ask any senior Israeli official involved in
national security, and he will tell you that the strategic relationship between
the United States and Israel has never been stronger than under President
Obama. “I can hardly remember a better period of American support and backing,
and Israeli cooperation and similar strategic understanding of events around
us,” the defense minister, Ehud Barak, sad last year “than what we have right
now.”
Everyone admits that this is true but as former Israeli
Ambassador to the US Zalman Shoval said on radio here on Tuesday, “the level of
security support the U.S. provides Israel is based on interests not
relationships.” In other words, as long
as it is in the U.S.’ interest to provide military support to Israel it will do
so, independent of who is sitting in the White House and vice versa. So there
is no reason to heap praise on Obama for this, he is simply doing what he
perceives is in America’s best interest.
Through painstaking diplomacy, Mr. Obama
persuaded Russia and China to support harsh sanctions on Iran, including an
arms embargo and the cancellation of a Russian sale of advanced antiaircraft
missiles that would have severely complicated any military strike against
Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Perhaps true but both China and Russia continue to buy
oil from Iran and are consistently reluctant to put that source of supply at
risk. If they were willing to do
otherwise the Iran problem might be more easily addressable.
Mr. Obama has been steadfast against efforts
to delegitimize Israel in international forums. He has blocked Palestinian
attempts to bypass negotiations and achieve United Nations recognition as a
member state, a move that would have opened the way to efforts by Israel’s foes
to sanction and criminalize its policies. As a sign of its support, the Obama
administration even vetoed a Security Council resolution on Israeli
settlements, a resolution that mirrored the president’s position and that of
every American administration since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Factually, of course, Saban is correct. However, no one can forget Ambassador Susan
Rice’s comments at the time of the above mentioned veto, when she bent over
backwards to explain that the U.S. really did support the resolution but not
its genesis to wit:
Our opposition to the resolution before
this Council today should therefore not be misunderstood to mean we support
settlement activity. On the contrary, we reject in the strongest terms the
legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity. For more than four
decades, Israeli settlement activity in territories occupied in 1967 has
undermined Israel’s security and corroded hopes for peace and stability in the
region. Continued settlement activity violates Israel’s international
commitments, devastates trust between the parties, and threatens the prospects
for peace.
While
we agree with our fellow Council members—and indeed, with the wider
world—about the folly and illegitimacy of continued Israeli settlement
activity, we think it unwise for this Council to attempt to resolve the core
issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians. We therefore regrettably have
opposed this draft resolution.
One would be pained to call that a vote in support of
Israel.
He ends with the following statement:
When I enter the voting booth, I’m going to
ask myself, what do I prefer for Israel and its relationship with the United
States: meaningful action or empty rhetoric? To me the answer is clear: I’ll
take another four years of Mr. Obama’s steadfast support over Mr. Romney’s
sweet nothings.
Well, he is certainly entitled to his opinion but as he
says earlier in his op-ed quoting John Adams, “facts are stubborn things.” They certainly are and the facts tell us that
for those of us living in Israel, perhaps the scariest thought is an Obama in
the white house unconcerned about what he needs to do to seek another
term. Now that’s a fact worth
considering.
