Thursday, March 28, 2024
Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Sally Zerker: Obama, An Existential Danger to Israel

 

 

 

President Obama is intent on making a bad deal with Iran. Nothing can deter him; not Israel’s unconcealed expressions of outright angst, nor the Gulf Arab states’—Saudi, the UAE, and Qatar—deep distrust of the United States’ build-up of their Shi’ite enemy.

 

Those opposed to the deal are not ‘hysterical,’ as Secretary of State John Kerry contended recently. It’s very easy to see how rational those are who object to the provisions of the P5+1 negotiations underway with Iran. Even Obama in fact has admitted that it would be possible for Iran to make a bomb in a matter of days under the terms of the agreement, because Iran will be allowed to keep its entire nuclear infrastructure, including scientific research and testing, operational. He has also conceded that sanctions could be lifted immediately as the Ayatollah demands, but he maintains that this compromise doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters, he claims, is that the sanctions could be re-imposed immediately if Iran is found cheating. But everyone knows this is impossible. Additionally, he is offering Iran a $30-$50 billion signing bonus (from the frozen Iranian assets), which will give Iran the kind of economic thrust necessary to carry out and expand its nefarious aggressive terrorist schemes, not only against Israel, but also against Sunni Muslims as well. Fourthly, his overall ambition, which he has stated, is that Iran ultimately become “a very successful regional power”.

 

This is the same Iran whose official Iranian policy is that “the destruction of Israel is not negotiable”, as recently expressed by the head of its religious-based militia, again endorsing this undeviating threat to destroy Israel, repeated by every Iranian leader since this regime has been in power. This is the same Iran that funds and arms Hezbollah and Hamas with tens of thousands of rockets and missiles, fired at and directed at Israeli civilians, from both the north and the south of the country. This is the same Iran who now has taken over four capitals in adjoining Arab countries. This is the same Iran that is in partnership with Russia operating the civil war in Syria, which is continuing to use chemical weapons, despite Obama’s slighted “red line”. This is the same Iran about which the renowned international civil rights lawyer, Irwin Cotler, says that this P5+1 deal has “sanitized the Iranian regime’s massive domestic repression”, where some 900 prisoners of conscience and political prisoners continue to languish in Iranian jails, many subject to torture and under threat of execution.

 

There is no question that with the completion of the P5+1 deal, Iran’s hegemony over the Middle East will increase, and will continue destabilizing the region with its tactics and power. Undoubtedly too, the deal will underscore the struggle between Shi’ites and Sunnis, making it almost inevitable that Saudi Arabia and Egypt will accelerate acquisition of nuclear weapons. Already, purchases from Pakistan are rumored to be in the works. Does this not indicate the possibility in the future of a nuclear apocalypse?

 

So, the big question is, why does Obama want to gamble with this potentially horrible outcome? It doesn’t make sense. I know he has in mind his legacy, but does he really want a legacy that could include nuclear war? And is he so indifferent to anti-American feelings that it is irrelevant to him that, to this day, Iranians scream ‘death to America’ at every opportunity? It’s a conundrum; how to explain the contradiction and risks of Obama’s policy on Iran! For me the answer lies in perceiving who the real Obama is.

 

When we first were exposed to this young politician, we had no idea who Barack Obama was. Many commentators recognized that before he became president, Obama never ‘made’ anything, not a physical thing, not a company, not an organization, not even an article when he was editor of the Harvard Law Review, nothing. But I think he did make one thing; he created the mythic figure Barack Hussein Obama. What we know about this person is only what he has told us about himself, through an autobiography, written when he was just 33 years old . He was “lucky” in this respect that he had no mother, father or even grandfather alive when he went public with his invention. And his grandmother was dying at the time he was running for president. So there were no authoritative figures who could be queried or even be seen to evaluate his narratives. Furthermore, there are no existing family members evident in his life now, aside from a half-sister in the US, and possibly half-brothers from Africa. But neither you nor I nor anyone else has ever seen them as part of his entourage or in any family role. And either he had no childhood friends to be interviewed or, if they exist, they’ve chosen silence on the subject, as has indeed the press.

 

So, he was a clean slate. Whatever Obama said during the electioneering period I dismiss, particularly about his commitment to Israel, because these turned out to be false. The true Obama came out in his first two speeches abroad after he became president, one in Cairo and one in Berlin. In Cairo he revealed his devotion to Islam, as he repeatedly quoted the verses of the “Holy Koran” in a passionate voice, and pledged as president to revise and advance Islam’s relations with America.

 

The Berlin speech is when he made clear that he doesn’t like America as it is, and he began apologizing for its ‘mistakes’, its racism, its colonialism. And he saw nothing exceptional about the US, no different than any other country. It’s not worth debating this point; it’s so obvious that the super power of the world is very different in so many respects—economically, militarily, etc.—from other countries.

 

Does this mean I believe Obama is a) a Muslim, and b) an isolationist. I know he was born a Muslim because by Islamic law if the father is Muslim so is the child, and his father was Muslim. But we can observe that he definitely is not a practicing Muslim. As for his position on international involvement, it is clear that Obama doesn’t want the US to have a special role in the world. But in the years as president of the world’s super power, often he has had no alternative to that of the US intervening, but has done so reluctantly and hesitatingly.  As a result, his foreign policy is a mess, full of contradictions and false promises. And this foreign policy disarray is, at least in part, what is behind this Iranian deal, as Obama aspires to transform his legacy from one of disorder to one of stability and acumen.

 

Even though, as is evident, Obama is not a Muslim, his mindset on Israel was essentially the same as that of the Islamic worlds. All recent polls show predominant negative evaluation of Israel as well as outright antisemitism in the Muslim world, with the highest numbers, as high as 95%, among Palestinians. Whether consciously or subconsciously, Obama comes from the same perception, and no wonder, his formative years were within a Muslim society, Muslim schools, Muslim friends and Muslim family. Therefore, in my opinion, he came to the idea of Israel with a prejudiced view. As a result, when he did justify the existence of Israel to his Muslim audience in Cairo, he identified it as the product of the Holocaust, and he has repeated that rationale since. He has never expressed any acceptance of the historical rights of Jews to the land of Israel, or the concept of Jews as the aboriginal people of the land. Nor is he willing to accept any legitimate international law that challenges the notion of Jewish ‘occupation’ of the lands in the West Bank. For the Arabs, all of the land from the sea to the river Jordan is ‘occupation’. It’s not clear to me how much of the land is ‘occupation’ in Obama’s mind.

 

Obama was always hostile to Israel. We’re supposed to think Obama’s problem with Israel is Netanyahu. That’s simply not true. Already, in 2009, before he had even met Netanyahu, he said “it’s time to put daylight between Israel and America”. He was humiliating Netanyahu and thereby showing disrespect for Israel as early as 2010, when he hardly knew him or had dealings with him. Remember how he abandoned Netanyahu during a meeting in the White House in order to go for lunch with Vice-President Biden and didn’t invite Netanyahu to join them, or when he forced Netanyahu to enter the White House through a back door, on top of his rudeness when he let Netanyahu languish in the office while he supposedly went to eat dinner with his family. Such disgraceful, offensive treatment cannot be justified in the behavior of any president to any head of state, let alone to that of an ally, and inevitably it is an insult to Israel and the Jewish people. As a Jew, I feel insulted. 

 

Hence, fundamentally, Obama never liked Israel, especially an Israel that is a proud Jewish state living on its Biblical homeland. With the election of Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency in 2009, Israel could no longer count on a friend in the White House. But it’s more extreme than loss of friendship now. His defense of Iran and its uranium enablement, the country that is an avowed threat to Israel’s existence, might logically be designated the work of an outright enemy. If the behavior is deeply hostile, the label of the architect is irrelevant. What counts is the deed, and Obama’s deed with respect to the danger to Israel is odious.

 

Those who care about Israel are fearful that they are faced with an enemy in the White House for another 20 months or so. Let us pray we don’t get a successor to Barack Hussein Obama that essentially is a continuation of his outlook and policies.

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