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Since he took office, Obama has tried to undermine Bibi Netanyahu’s hold on the leadership of Israel. But in fact, he has only undermined himself. Today we will explore the latest in a long line of the president’s MidEast foolishness. Toby Harnden starts it off.
… Some Israelis believe that Mr Obama hoped his words would destabilise Mr Netanyahu’s coalition government and bring in Tzipi Livni, the Kadima leader and head of the Israeli opposition, who is viewed in Washington as more flexible and realistic.
The result of the past few days, however, may well be that real Israeli-Palestinian talks have been made more elusive. Mr Netanyahu took a considerable risk in speaking so bluntly to an American head of state. The response from the staunchly pro-Israel American commentator Jeffrey Goldberg was a blog post headlined: “Dear Mr Netanyahu, Please Don’t Speak to My President That Way”.
But Mr Netanyahu’s coalition appears to be solid at the moment and he could emerge stronger from his spat with Mr Obama. …
… In 2008, 78 per cent of Jewish voters chose Mr Obama over Senator John McCain. That level of support could well ebb between now and 2012. More seriously, there are signs that donations from wealthy Jews, which played a key role in Mr Obama’s stratospheric fundraising totals in 2008, will fall off.
Ed Koch, the former New York mayor and a prominent Democrat and Obama donor in 2008, condemned the President for having “sought to reduce Israel’s negotiation power”, echoing what many other prominent Jewish Democrats have said.
Mr Obama has always made clear that he wants to be not merely an ordinary American president but one to rival Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John F Kennedy.
In spelling out to Israel, as he did at Aipac, what he sees as “the facts we all must confront”, no one could accuse him of timidity. He may well, however, have made his own aim of being the great American peacemaker in the Middle East much more difficult to achieve.
Jennifer Rubin on the AIPAC speeches.
More so than the speech (which was vintage Barack Obama — self-pitying, defensive and internally inconsistent), the reaction of those inside the AIPAC conference and from those not in attendance reflected the extraordinary degree to which the president has fragmented the Jewish community. The story of the day was: Friends of Israel are divided over Obama’s motives, goals and feelings about the Jewish state.
The first reaction preceded the speech. Before the president spoke, House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) delivered a rock-solid, pro-Israel speech that was in effect a poke in the eye of Obama. Hoyer went thorough nearly all of the problematic issues raised by Obama in his Thursday speech and — boom, boom, boom — then one by one, to the delight of the crowd, took positions contrary to or more clearly pro-Israel than Obama’s. It was a cathartic scene in which attendees reluctant to boo or hiss the president let it be known where they stood with loud and frequent standing ovations. Hoyer said that the United States should confirm the “memorandum of understanding” (the 2004 letters exchanged between President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon). Obama did not, although he borrowed one phrase referring to defensible borders. Hoyer announced that the parties should return to the bargaining table with no preconditions. Obama let it be known he’s certain where the border negotiations must start from. Hoyer was emphatic that the U.S. government will not fund a unity government with Hamas. Obama was silent on funding. Hoyer was the un-Obama — clear, unequivocally supportive of Israel and entirely within the mainstream, bipartisan pro-Israel tradition. No one I spoke to had a negative word to say of his address, and many attendees including Republicans were effusive in praise. …
Alana Goodman says the administration asked for this.
… But if Obama’s position was taken out of context, he’s the one to blame. It was his staffers who were telling the New York Times and other media outlets that there was going to be a major “surprise” in his Thursday address, and suggested that it was related to Israel. With literally nothing else newsworthy in the speech besides his 1967 border comments, obviously reporters were going to run with that story. …
Jonathan Tobin notes WaPo’s editorial criticizing the president’s efforts.
President Obama and his staff thought they were being very clever by throwing in the declaration that the 1967 borders were the baseline for future Middle East peace talks into his speech on the Arab Spring protests on the eve of a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They calculated Netanyahu would have no choice but to accept this last-minute slap across the face from his country’s only ally. And if he did talk back, they figured he would find himself isolated without the backing of Israel’s allies in Congress and with most of the American media lined up solidly against him.
But Obama appears to have misread the situation. Netanyahu’s strong reply rightly declaring that the 1967 borders were indefensible may have infuriated the White House, but, contrary to their plan, not everybody is jeering his defiance.
The Washington Post editorial page took the president to school on Friday for injecting a counter-productive irritant into Middle East policy. As the Post wrote:
“Mr. Obama’s decision to confront [Netanyahu] with a formal U.S. embrace of the idea, with only a few hours’ warning, ensured a blowup. Israeli bad feeling was exacerbated by Mr. Obama’s failure to repeat past U.S. positions — in particular, an explicit stance against the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel.
Mr. Obama should have learned from his past diplomatic failures — including his attempt to force a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank — that initiating a conflict with Israel will thwart rather than advance peace negotiations. He may also be giving short shrift to what Mr. Netanyahu called “some basic realities.” The president appears to assume that Mr. Abbas is open to a peace deal despite growing evidence to the contrary.” …
More on this from Omri Ceren. Also in Contentions.
… The Wiesenthal Center’s statement makes it clear that it’s not a case of people just not getting what Obama is suggesting. The widely recognized problem with Obama’s speech is that he adopted the final Palestinian negotiating position as the starting position for talks. That would leave Israel—now deprived of bargaining chips—in the position of trying to negotiate out of that position with nothing to trade. In the process the president abrogated any number of previous security guarantees to Israel, while asking them to have faith in future security guarantees. No wonder friends of Israel from across the political spectrum are labeling the President’s gambit a non-starter.
For completion’s sake, the Washington Times also just published a disbelieving editorial about Obama’s almost willfully created rift with Israel. Of the various permutations (was it a new policy? was it an existing stance? is it a coherent policy?) they settle basically on the combination suggested earlier on Contentions: it’s a break with previous administrations, but a culmination of this administration’s failed approaches. The question is why the White House would continue pushing failed initiatives based on flawed assumptions, and the editorial takes a detour through how the President has mishandled the issue of Jerusalem.
If its goal was to turn U.S. media outlets against Netanyahu and Israel, the administration’s lack of judgment went far beyond the speech itself.
Eric Cantor went to AIPAC too. Ron Radosh tells the story of his huge ovation from the conference.
… Undoubtedly, his most well-received moment was when he addressed the president’s own illusions. Cantor first noted that Palestinian culture — which Obama omitted criticizing — is laced with “resentment and hatred.” Cantor then shrewdly rebuked Obama:
[Palestinian culture is] the root of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. It is not about the ’67 lines. And until Israel’s enemies come to terms with this reality, a true peace will be impossible … If the Palestinians want to live in peace in a state of their own, they must demonstrate that they are worthy of a state.
He boldly laid out a challenge to Abbas, noting that his media and schools regularly preach hatred of Israel as well as Jews as a people. His following remarks received an ovation:
Stop naming public squares and athletic teams after suicide bombers. And come to the negotiating table when you have prepared your people to forego hatred and renounce terrorism — and Israel will embrace you. Until that day, there can be no peace with Hamas. Peace at any price isn’t peace; it’s surrender.
Clearly alluding to the president, Cantor then said that friendship between Israel and the U.S. has to be based on reality, “not just on rhetoric.” While words come and go, “only deeds count.”
And with another slap at the president, he remarked: “Now is the time to lead … from the front.”
Following up on the post yesterday about the disaster that is QE2, we have more from Market Watch.
It‘s cost $600 billion of your money. And it was supposed to rescue the economy. But has Ben Bernanke’s huge financial stimulus package, known as “Quantitative Easing 2,” actually worked as planned?
QE2 is being wound down in the next few weeks. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has said it has left the economy “moving in the right direction.”
But an analysis of the real numbers tells a very different story.
Turns out the program has created maybe 700,000 full-time jobs — at a cost of around $850,000 each.
House prices are lower than before QE2 was launched. Economic growth is slower. Inflation is higher. …
Need a break from bad news, Here’s Andrew Malcolm on the best of late-night humor.
Letterman: On Monday no more smoking in New York City public places. So after today if you’re holding something smoking in New York City, it better be a gun.
Leno: President Obama wants Israel to go back to pre-1967 borders. Now, Native Americans are demanding Obama go back to pre-1492 borders.
Leno: You heard about that whole world-coming-to-an-end thing, right? Look, I love Oprah too. But it was just a TV show.
Leno: President Obama’s approval rating went up after the SEALs got Osama Bin Laden. But now it’s back down. That’s bad news, not for Obama, for Kadafi. …