Love of the Land: Obama's 5 Big Lies About Israel

Obama's 5 Big Lies About Israel

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
25 April '10

In preparation for his attempt to impose a final solution on Israel, Obama is spreading a variety of lies through the media and his spokesmen about Israel. And by exposing those lies, we can best get at the truth.


1. Netanyahu Must Choose Between Obama and his Right Wing


What Obama's people would like you to believe here is that all it would take to restore good relations with the Obama Administration is for Netanyahu to reject the "extremists" and do what Obama tells him to do.

But in fact the vast majority of Israelis support Netanyahu's position that Jews have the right to live anywhere in Jerusalem, and oppose Obama's position that Jews have no right to live or build homes in parts of Jerusalem that were seized by Jordan in 1948 and ethnically cleansed of Jews.

Netanyahu's real choice is between Obama and the vast majority of his country's voters. By demanding that he turn his back on them and do what Obama says, the real demand here is for Netanyahu to completely disregard Israel's democracy, and betray his own electorate, and enact Apartheid in Jerusalem. This will supposedly appease Obama. And all Netanyahu has to do is disregard the Israeli people's wishes in favor of DC's wishes.

So Netanyahu must choose between Obama and democracy. And the media is blasting him because he chose democracy over Obama.


2. Obama Wants Netanyahu's Right Wing Coalition to be More Centrist

More centrist. Really? Netanyahu's current coalition includes the left wing Labor party, an immigrant's rights party and the party of Sefardi Jews. It even has an Arab Muslim Deputy Minister.

So what is Obama's idea of a centrist Israeli government? One that jettisons Shas, the party of Jewish refugees from Muslim countries, and Yisrael Beitenu, the party of Jewish refugees from the USSR-- in favor of Kadima, an illegitimately created party headed by Tzipi Livni, a former member of Netanyahu's own Likud party. How is a coalition with Kadima more "centrist" than a coalition with the Labor party and parties that represent Israel's different minorities? The answer is it isn't. The only thing "centrist" about Kadima, is that Tzipi Livni airheadedly endorses every Obama proposal, which hasn't exactly made her popular in the country. But it has made her popular with Obama, who wants to force her into a coalition with Netanyahu.

If you believe the Washington talking heads, Livni will make Netanyahu's coalition more centrist than former Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barack. This despite the fact that Kadima officials have repeatedly stated they will not enter any coalition headed by Netanyahu.

Let me emphasize this again. Obama's people are trying to force Netanyahu to drop two parties, one of Jewish refugees from Muslim countries and another of Jewish refugees from Communist countries-- (it's not too hard to figure out why Obama would dislike both) in order to form a more "centrist" coalition with a former member of his own party.

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Love of the Land: Obama's 5 Big Lies About Israel

Love of the Land: Obama's Israeli coalition members

Obama's Israeli coalition members

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
28 March '10

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.

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Love of the Land: Obama's Israeli coalition members

Love of the Land: Obama Officials: Relax, We’re Just Trying to Break up Bibi’s Coalition#links#links#links

Obama Officials: Relax, We’re Just Trying to Break up Bibi’s Coalition

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
16 March '10

Jeffrey Goldberg spoke with White House officials today and posted this report.

So what is the goal? The goal is force a rupture in the governing coalition that will make it necessary for Netanyahu to take into his government Livni’s centrist Kadima Party (he has already tried to do this, but too much on his terms) and form a broad, 68-seat majority in Knesset…

Obama knows that this sort of stable, centrist coalition is the key to success. He would rather, I understand, not have to deal with Netanyahu at all — people near the President say that, for one thing, Obama doesn’t think that Netanyahu is very bright, and there is no chemistry at all between the two men — but he’d rather have a Netanyahu who is being pressured from his left than a Netanyahu who is being pressured from the right.

So here we have on record the Obama administration saying 1) that it is trying to topple the government of a democratic ally (if only we could try this in Tehran!) 2) that it believes it has such mastery of Israeli politics that publicly bludgeoning Bibi will result in such a shakeup, and that 3) even if the hoped-for new government is formed, the White House thinks it’s a good idea to go on record stating that the Prime Minister they will have to deal with is stupid.

This is pretty amazing. And it’s more evidence that not only is Obama ignorant of how Israel and the Middle East work, but that he refuses to do any on-the-job learning. He is pushing forward with his failed strategy of a year ago, only this time with a bigger hammer. He appears to be unconcerned with the importance to the Israeli public of his reversal on the terms of the settlement freeze, which the White House was praising just a few months ago. He clearly does not understand one of the basic lessons they teach in Peace Process 101 — that Israel does not take risks for peace when it feels threatened, especially not when it feels threatened by the United States. Obama clearly doesn’t understand this, although I remain skeptical that all of this is really about the peace process.

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Love of the Land: Obama Officials: Relax, We’re Just Trying to Break up Bibi’s Coalition

Love of the Land: The Perils of Freelance Diplomacy

The Perils of Freelance Diplomacy

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
24 November 09

Shaul Mofaz has spent the past two weeks hawking his peace plan overseas. He has met with Obama administration officials Dennis Ross, Dan Shapiro, and Jeffrey Feltman; U.S. congressmen; UN officials; and the American, Turkish, Russian, Egyptian, and Jordanian ambassadors to Israel. But unless you follow Israeli politics closely, you’re probably wondering, “Who?”

And that’s the point: Mofaz isn’t a member of Israel’s government or even a party leader; he’s the No. 2 man in the largest opposition party, Kadima — which has yet to even discuss his plan. In other words, the plan he’s marketing abroad is one he hasn’t yet managed to sell even to his own party, much less to the Israeli public; moreover, he occupies no post that would enable him to implement it.

Nor is this unprecedented: other freelance Israeli diplomats have received equal or greater attention overseas. Yossi Beilin, for instance, met with high-ranking officials worldwide about his Geneva Initiative (a proposed Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement) in 2003, though he held no public office at the time. And when he did run for the Knesset three years later, the party he headed won five seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Not exactly a resounding vote of confidence from Israel’s public.

Were these foreign officials merely wasting their time, nobody would care. But this behavior has two pernicious effects.

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Love of the Land: The Perils of Freelance Diplomacy

Love of the Land: The Vision of Shaul

The Vision of Shaul

Yisrael Harel
Haaretz
12 November 09

According to Shaul Mofaz, only an Israeli peace plan will prevent terrorism (and we have given the Palestinians a permanent exemption from needing to present plans of their own). After all, everyone knows that the outbreak of the longest and cruelest period of terror ever to hit Israel (lasting about 10 years) stemmed from the absence of the Oslo initiative (and the subsequent Oslo agreement). Similarly, the terror of rockets on the western Negev stemmed from the absence of the disengagement plan (and its subsequent implementation).

Since today, due to the absence of a plan, relative quiet prevails in the south, it is necessary to again take the initiative. Only another plan will extricate the people of Israel from the unfamiliar, abnormal tranquillity they have had to contend with since the army's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

Mofaz's diplomatic plan is a stew of rehashed ideas, most of which are either irrelevant or will never be implemented, that various people have tossed into the political debate in recent years. The reason the diplomatic "meditations" of the chairman of the organization of truthful politicians even deserves consideration stems from the positive, sometimes even enthusiastic, response with which the initiative has been received.

Only in Israel could a former chief of staff who failed both ethically and operationally in a long war on terror, and then became a hapless defense minister (who predicted that the disengagement would bring an end to the Qassam rockets, and then contended with such impressive success with the thousands of missiles of "peace and quiet" that were fired at Negev residents), be taken seriously by the public rather than being seen as a political adventurer. Only in Israel could a politician who cheated his party and his voters (saying that Likud was his home and then defecting to Kadima) almost win the leadership of another major party and then vie for the prime minister's crown ("as prime minister, I will have the right to implement the plan").

The torchbearers of Mofaz's prophetic vision (who, in their prior incarnations, embraced the visions of eminent seers like Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and others) tell the public that well-known experts reinforced his sense of urgency (we need the courage to change before disaster strikes) about coming out with a "peace plan." The position papers from which his plan derives were prepared by think tanks. It would be interesting to know who those think tanks are - because think tanks worthy of the name would make their case with facts and figures and show the prime ministerial aspirant that suicide bombers and Qassam rockets exploded in our midst in the wake of "peace plans," not because of their absence.

There is almost no important detail in Mofaz's innovative plan that has not been discussed in the past with the Palestinians and rejected out of hand. Genuine research would have revealed that. Such research would also have discovered that in response to every one of the "plans" conceived in Israel with the goal of avoiding "diplomatic stalemate" (plans whose guiding principle always involved concessions on Israel's part), the Palestinians only hardened their stance. Instead of seeing these plans as a demonstration of Israel's sincere desire for peace, they viewed them, and with justification, as a product of weakness.

More than once, the Palestinians have reacted to these plans with outbursts of lethal terror. And why should they respond to them in any other way, when they know that rejecting these plans, and certainly if coupled with violence, will lay the groundwork for the next concession-filled plan, including the absurd idea (which Mofaz includes in his plan) of giving the Palestinians territory within the Green Line?

Judging by the reception Mofaz's plan has won, those who didn't want him as chairman of the Kadima party could get him in the future as prime minister. Then Israel, not America, would be known as the land of unlimited opportunity, at least for politicians without backbone. But given the stringent demands the public makes of its leaders - integrity, vision, adherence to goals, leadership skills and strategic understanding - actually, why not Mofaz?

Love of the Land: The Vision of Shaul