Obama's Jewish Defenders

Two weeks ago, President Barack Obama opened a diplomatic war on Israel. The proximate cause of his offensive was the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Board's decision to approve the future construction of 1,600 housing units in northern Jerusalem.

The goal of the assault is twofold. First, it seeks to undermine the legitimacy of Israel's control over Jerusalem in order to weaken Israel's standing among the American public. As Obama advisor Martin Indyk mocked, Obama's onslaught against Israel has made the Netanyahu government "supersensitive," about Jerusalem.

Second, as Obama's advisors explained to The Atlantic, through his unprecedented attacks on Israel's right to sovereignty over its capital city, Obama is working to topple Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government in the hopes of replacing it with a leftist government led by Tzipi Livni and Kadima.

It is a startling turn of events. Obama of course was elected to the presidency with the overwhelming support of the American Jewish community. Part of that support - which netted him 78 percent of the Jewish vote -- was based on his repeated assertion that he is absolutely committed to Israel's security.

Obama's expressed desire to overthrow the democratically elected government of Israel stands in contrast to his refusal to acknowledge the basic illegitimacy of the Iranian regime he seeks to appease. That government is founded on last June's stolen presidential elections which returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power amidst massive opposition from the Iranian people. And of course, the Iranian regime which Obama coddles is publicly developing nuclear weapons with the declared purpose of destroying Israel; serves as the leading state sponsor of terrorism; and according to the US and British militaries is training al Qaida and Taliban fighters to kill US and British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In an interview with ABC News in January, Obama made clear that the transformative change he pledged to bring to America during the 2008 presidential campaign remained the goal of his administration. Indeed, he made clear that to enact the sort of unpopular, radical domestic and foreign policies he favors, he is willing to diminish his prospects for reelection. As he put it, "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president."

To enact his deeply unpopular domestic agenda, Obama relies for support on labor unions, the leftist leadership of the Democratic Party on Capitol Hill, the leftist media and pressure organizations like MoveOn.org. These organs work to demonize Republicans while threatening Democrats who are not leftists with defunding and primary challenges in order to coerce them to support Obama's radical domestic policies.

In light of the deep and widespread support Israel enjoys among Israelis, Obama has cobbled together a similar coalition against the Netanyahu government specifically and against a strong Israel generally. His coalition for weakening the US alliance with Israel is comprised of Leftist Israelis - and particularly the Kadima Party and the Israeli media on the one hand -- and leftist pro-Palestinian American Jewish groups on the other hand. Together, these Israeli and American Jewish groups provide political cover for Obama's onslaught against Israel and the US alike.

The Jerusalem planning board's decision was non-political. The board is staffed by professional urban planners, representatives of the nature reserves authority and other statutory bodies who convene to determine whether building schemes comport with law and building regulations or not. Its meetings never attract much attention.

As the Netanyahu government sought to understand how a routine meeting of the board became an international story, many officials alleged that Kadima had colluded with the Obama administration to exploit the board's decision to provoke a crisis in US-Israel relations. Kadima's purpose in this, it was argued, was to lower the public's support for Netanyahu.

These allegations have been supported by the fact that a week before Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to Israel, Livni confidante and Kadima MK Yoel Hasson told Israeli Radio, "In the coming weeks we will see how messed up Netanyahu's relations with the Europeans and Americans are."

Furthermore, Makor Rishon's senior columnist Amnon Lord reported last Friday that Kadima heavyweight Haim Ramon met with one of Obama's senior Middle East advisors ahead of Biden's visit. He also pointed out that Livni's key political advisor Eyal Arad is also an advisor to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

Whether or not Kadima colluded with the Obama administration to cook up the crisis over building in Jerusalem, Livni and her cohorts were quick to loudly condemn Netanyahu for the decision - about which he was uninformed and regarding which he has no legal authority to intervene.

In condemning Netanyahu, Livni and her Kadima colleagues were energetically assisted by the Israeli media.

All the major commentators at all the major newspapers pounced on the story as a means to attack Netanyahu and side with the Obama administration. Prominent among these condemnations was Yediot Ahronot's senior commentator Shimon Shiffer. Ignoring Biden's long record in the Senate of rejecting every sanctions bill against Iran, and his fair-weathered support for Israel, Shiffer declared Biden the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the US Senate while lambasting Netanyahu for "insulting" this great friend of Israel by not preventing a meeting he didn't know about and had no authority to interfere with.

With the Israeli Left actively supporting Obama's onslaught against Netanyahu in Israel, Obama's Jewish American surrogates J Street and Americans for Peace Now denounced his critics at home. In time for AIPAC's annual policy conference this week in Washington, J-Street published a full page ad in The New York Times on Monday applauding Obama's condemnation of Israel and calling for the administration to dictate the terms of a "peace" deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

These Jewish American and Israeli forces provide cover not only for Obama to attack Israel, but even for anti-Semites to gain credibility for their vicious broadsides against the Jewish state. So it is that last week The Washington Post published an op-ed by Prof. Steve Walt, the co-author of the anti-Semitic tome The Israel and US Foreign Policy. In his article, Walt claimed that AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Anti Defamation League are anti-Israel and that Obama, J-Street and Americans for Peace Now are Israel's true friends. By inference, of course, Walt asserted that he too, is a great friend of Israel. And this is from a man who won his fame by claiming that Israel's Jewish American supporters operate in a conspiratorial, underhanded manner to influence US foreign policy in a way that harms US national security.

By proclaiming that Obama is pro-Israel, his Jewish supporters in Israel and the US invert reality. Their obvious intention is to use the jargon of supporting Israel to confuse, demoralize and disenfranchise Israel's actual supporters in the US while demonizing the majority of Israelis who believe that Obama is hostile to Israel and support Netanyahu in his rejection of Obama's pressure.

The great challenge of the overwhelming majority of Israelis, and of Israel's actual supporters in the US is to hold these mendacious voices in Israel and in the American Jewish community alike accountable for their actions. Otherwise, by pretending to be pro-Israel while attacking Israel's sovereign rights and actual supporters these forces will do more than simply destabilizing the democratically elected government of Israel. They will undermine the foundations of the US-Israel alliance and endanger the security of the Jewish state and the wellbeing of the American Jewish community.

Americans watching in horror as Barack Obama makes clear that he is an enemy, not a friend of Israel, will be shocked to know that while the Israeli public shares their estimation, the Israeli media and the political left are taking Obama's side against Israel.

It is important to understand the context behind what is happening today in Israel because the powers that be on the Israeli Left are advancing several different agendas at once by attacking Netanyahu.

For their part, Yediot Ahronot, Ma'ariv and Channel 2 television news which is owned by more or less the same people as Yediot, are all battling Netanyahu as a proxy against his political supporter US billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Adelson owns the new free daily newspaper Yisrael Hayom and his is distributing for free in 350,000 copies a day. Recently, Yisrael Hayom began publishing a weekend newspaper as well.

Before establishing Yisrael Hayom, Adelson made two attempts buy Ma'ariv which has been hemorrhaging cash for years. After the leftist media establishment circled the wagons to block him, Ma'ariv's primary owners, the Nimrodi family rejected his offer.

Just this month, they sold a large share of the newspaper to high-tech multimillionaire Zaki Rakib. Media analysts suspect that something other than financial interests played a role in the deal because no one believes that Ma'ariv has a future in light of Adelson's move to capture the newspaper advertising market with his free paper. Among other things, it has been reported that Rakib has just formed an investment fund with Yediot's heiress Judy Shalom-Nir-Mozes.

So too, in Jul 2008 Yediot lost its monopoly, (i.e. more than 50% share) of the Israeli daily newspaper market due to Yisrael Hayom's erosion of its readership. Both Yediot and Ma'ariv declared war against Netanyahu in the hopes that by putting the squeeze on him, he will prevail on Adelson to cut back on Yisrael Hayom's circulation. In light of Yediot's owners' ownership shares in Channel 2, financial interests have played a role in the television station's animosity towards the premier.

The Israeli media's business interests are perfectly aligned with their ideological interests, which are overwhelmingly far left. As many of you know, last year, through my position as the senior Middle East fellow at the Center for Security Policy, I launched Latma, a Hebrew-language, satirical media criticism website to expose the political bias and incompetence of the print and broadcast media in Israel to the domestic audience in a new way. For the past several weeks, I have been posting the English subtitled versions of our weekly videocast The Tribal Update.

At any rate, the ideological bias of the Israeli media has similarly led the local press to take Obama's side against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Since Netanyahu returned from the US, Yediot, Ma'ariv, and the far-leftist flagship Ha'aretz have been pressuring him to adhere to Obama's diktat and bring Kadima in as a senior coalition member while ejecting Shas and Yisrael Beitenu. In the past week, Ha'aretz has manipulatively published polling data to create a false perception of Obama as friendly towards Israel twice. Ma'ariv and Yediot have both blamed Netanyahu for the rift with Obama and Ha'aretz has repeatedly called for the overthrow of his government, (in the interest of Israel's crucial relationship with Washington, of course).

Add to this mix the behavior of the political left. First we have the anti-Ehud Barak chorus in the Labor party. Since Barak joined Netanyahu's government, a half of his party has rejected his move and consistently voted with the opposition against the government. This means that we have seen a de facto spilt in the Labor party for the past year. In the interests of maintaining the fiction that Barak remains the leader of the far left party, Netanyahu has given in the Barak on substantive issues to placate his party members and prevent them from breaking off and forming a new party.

Labor's five cabinet ministers for their part, have no interest in leaving the government but to placate Labor primary voters - the decisive faction of which are Israeli Arabs - they give lip service to the Obama administration's demand that Netanyahu bring Kadima in to the government. They of course know that if Kadima joins the coalition, they will lose their ministries, which is why there is no reason to take statements by the likes of Binyamin Ben Eliezer and Shalom Simchon seriously. But the media, which wish to weaken Netanyahu, has seized on half-hearted statements by Ben Eliezer and Simchon as well as by Avishai Braverman to attack Netanyahu.

Finally, there is Kadima and its chairwoman Tzippi Livni. As I wrote last week, there is suspicion that Kadima colluded with the Obama administration to initiate the current crisis in relations. Since Netanyahu returned to Israel, Livni has been pouring salt on his wounds and very publically blaming Netanyahu for the crisis, alleging that he isn't serious about peace and that he is a coward because he won't bow to Obama. So too, Livni and her lackeys in the party are demanding that in exchange for their agreement to save Netanyahu from himself, that the premier disassemble his government, rewrite its guidelines, fire all the current ministers from their positions and give Kadima full control over his policies.

What all of this shows is that for Netanyahu, and for Israel a moment of truth has arrived. His challenge domestically is to unmask Kadima's Livni as a radical leftist. The way to do this is by tearing apart her party by bringing all centrist-right Kadima MKs into his government under the leadership of Livni's rival Shaul Mofaz. So too, he has to move in a manner that will embolden the far left members of Labor to bolt the party. If Labor cracks up, Netanyahu will be able to give a portion of their ministries to Kadima breakaways. This is the only thing Netanyahu can do to derail Obama's gambit to destabilize and dismantle his coalition. According to this report, Netanyahu seems to be operating on this logic.

Netanyahu leads the country at its hour of greatest peril. This week's battles along the border with Gaza as well as the riots in Jerusalem must be met with overwhelming force and now if a full-scale war is to be averted and Israel is to maintain the initiative of when and how to attack Iran. At this time, he needs a weakened opposition in order to neutralize the adversarial US President's ability to topple his government.

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