Posted on 06/30/2009 10:49:25 AM PDT by dervish
Have the Obama administration's Middle East policies created stress for our friends at the National Jewish Democratic Council? One possible clue is that their blog just began regular cross-posting of blog posts from a site called "Neurotic Democrat."
But more straightforward evidence can be found in a series of increasingly ludicrous "Fact sheets" that are about as convincing as the Wizard of Oz thundering "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."
Last year, NJDC assured Jewish voters, “Obama believes Israel’s Security is Paramount” and highlighted Obama’s pledge to AIPAC leaders that if he was elected the U.S. would continue to “stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel."
But it hasn't exactly worked out that way. And Jewish voters who believed NJDC's assurances about Obama must be unsettled -- if not alarmed -- by the headlines they see on a near-daily basis.
The New York Times describes President Obama’s policy as “one of the biggest shifts in American policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in three decades.” The Washington Post reports that Obama has taken “the toughest line against the continued expansion of Israeli settlements since the administration of President Jimmy Carter” adding that “his recent language about settlements is the starkest of any U.S. president in three decades, and tougher than most of his public rhetoric since emerging on the national scene.” The Christian Science Monitor observed that "what seemed good enough for George W. Bush is not acceptable to Barack Obama."
Slate’s Jacob Weisberg concludes, “this crew is serious about pressuring Israel.”
And Democrat Politicians are distancing themselves from the administration’s pressure-Israel tactics…
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY): "There’s a line between articulating U.S. policy and seeming to be pressuring a democracy on what are their domestic policies... I would have liked to hear the president talk more about the Palestinian obligation to cut down on terrorism.” Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL): “To expect Israel to have the same policy outside the security fence as inside the security fence is unrealistic; it’s counterproductive." Just today, Jackson Diehl, the Post's not-at-all right-wing Deputy Editorial Page Editor, has weighed in with a very measured column, in which he wonders why President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton seem set on the "odd adventure" of "a protracted confrontation with Israel".
How does NJDC attempt to sustain its claim that "U.S. policy on settlements has essentially not changed from the previous George W. Bush administration"?
Laughably, NJDC links constantly to a single news report, written before Bush administration officials and top members of then-Prime Minister Sharon’s team reached their understanding on settlements. But the single snapshot that news story provides ignores all that transpired subsequent to its publication. Diehl notes without apparent fear of contradication that the Bush administration "agreed to define loosely" the term settlement "freeze."
And the New York Times has published an exhaustive account of the history NJDC doesn't want you to know about.
In May 2003 [then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and top aide Dov Weinglass] met with [Elliott] Abrams and Stephen J. Hadley of the National Security Council and came up with the definition of settlement freeze: “no new communities were to be built; no Palestinian lands were to be appropriated for settlement purposes; building will not take place beyond the existing community outline; and no ‘settlement encouraging’ budgets were to be allocated... Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser at the time, signed off on that definition later that month and that the two governments also agreed to set up a joint committee to define more fully the meaning of “existing community outline” for established settlements... In April 2004, President Bush presented Mr. Sharon with a letter stating, “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949... That letter, Mr. Weinglass said, was a result of his earlier negotiations with Bush administration officials acknowledging that certain settlement blocks would remain Israeli and open to continued growth... The Israeli officials said that no Bush administration official had ever publicly insisted that Israel was obliged to stop all building in the areas it captured in 1967. They said it was important to know that major oral understandings reached between an Israeli prime minister and an American president would not simply be tossed aside when a new administration came into the White House.
What to make of NJDC's determination to play such a weak hand so brazenly? Call it the audacity of hope. As audacious as it is, they hope that pro-Israel voters will be easily misled by their silly sleights-of-hand and cherry-picked news clippings. They are hoping that Jewish voters' committment to Israel is shallow and their focus on its well-being is fleeting. No wonder an administration that requires such self-negation from its pro-Israel supporters has lost the confidence of 94 percent of Israelis.
RJC does great work.
good review of the Obama spin on Israel to keep Jewish voters on board
If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Those idiot Jews will vote for their own holocaust.
The idea that Obama is going to round up Jews and kill them is absurd.
HE won’t do it, but his Muslim friends will.
Then later on: "These cattle cars aren't so bad, stop complaining! There's a war one--did you expect first class?"
There's no reasoning with people who are blinded by denial.
SJackson, you are replying to a post that used the word "holocaust," not capitalized. I don't know exactly what Aroostook25 had in mind, so I can't speak for him.
Although we have come to use the term "the Holocaust" to refer to the rounding up and killing of Jews during the Nazi era, Jews have suffered other degradations and oppressions and persecutions of many types throughout our history. You might consider these as holocausts (lower case "h", using the more generalized original meaning of that word).
There are several possible future scenarios other than "round up Jews and kill them" which could be considered holocausts in the broader sense of the term, scenarios which an Obama administration could regrettably abet. Of these, one would be the demise of the state of Israel. Another could be various forms of government persecution of US Jews (and others) as dissidents, something akin to what went down in the USSR over many years. Not all government oppression need be physical; it could be legal or quasi-legal or economic as well.
Yes, this may seem pessimistic, but you have to realize that Jews tend to be treated particularly harshly in dictatorships, and a US president whose instincts are to play ball with the likes of Ahmadinejad, Chavez, and Castro, while dissing traditional allies, doesn't inspire optimism.
Oh, stop it.
Thanks dervish and justiceseeker93.
Would the death of five million Jewish Israelis be a holocaust? Obama and his Muslim friends could accomplish that.
There's no reasoning with people who are blinded by denial.Yup.
Would the death of five million Jewish Israelis be a holocaust? Obama and his Muslim friends could accomplish that.No problem. Their friends in the press will just blame it on Bush.
Obama’s top two partners in crime are Jewish. Soon to be money master of the world Bernanke is Jewish.
If Iran is successful in striking Israel, it won't be Obama's fault
And just a couple posts ago the contension was that his friends are Muslims, who are going to kill Jews.
You conservatives need to make up your minds, is Obama going to kill the Jews, or do the Jews run Obama.
You're not Rev. Wright are you.
Without belaboring the meaning of the word, when you note have suffered other degradations and oppressions and persecutions of many types throughout our history. You might consider these as holocausts (lower case "h", using the more generalized original meaning of that word). you're closer than you think. The term Shoah referred to the persecution of Jews in Europe for about a millenia. I don't believe the Sephardic community used it, but if they did throw in the Arab world. In the late 30s, early 40s it began to apply specificly to persecution under Hitler. The term Holocaust, referring to the persecution of Jews by Hitler, entered the English through translators in the early 1940s, though probably the earliest documents you could find on the web are post war. A prominent example, Israel's Declaration of Statehood, Shoah translated as Holocaust. So you're correct in a sense, it could refer to other forms of persecution of Jews, though the most common "disagreement" is that it should refer to the persecution of non-Jews by Hitler. Which is fine, Shoah can still be used.
As to Jews being persecuted under dictators, they're an easy scapegoat, but all opposition is persecuted under dictators. I wouldn't agree than Obama is a dictator, maybe in his dreams, but he's doing a lot more damage to Americans in general, particularly working Americans, than he's doing to Jews. Focusing on the religious arguement, particularly disparaging Jews freepers don't agree with based on their faith, or mocking their faith, isn't going to win votes.
Who’s to say there aren’t powerful Jews who are sympathetic to Mohammedanism?
I’m just pointing out facts.
What is your point? Please spell it out I like directness.
You haven't pointed out any facts.
What powerful Jews are you talking about that are in cahoots with Muslims to kill Jews?
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