Love of the Land: The Subtext of the Obama-Israel Dispute

The Subtext of the Obama-Israel Dispute

Amy D. Goldstein
American Thinker
17 March '10

President Obama has consistently stated that the Jewish state should not expand the so-called settlements beyond the Green Line even for natural growth. Today is the second day of the Jewish month of Nissan -- in two weeks, the Jewish people will celebrate the holiday of Passover, commemorating the Exodus from Egypt, when God liberated the Israelites from slavery. Pharaoh had tried to end "natural growth" of the Children of Israel by killing all of the Jewish newborn boys, but Moses escaped to become God's vehicle for salvation. Two weeks ago, Jews celebrated Purim, the holiday that commemorates the Jewish people's salvation from Haman's attempts to annihilate them throughout the Persian Empire (today's Iran), by retelling the story of Queen Esther.

Throughout history, non-Jewish leaders have locked Jewish communities into ghettos in an attempt to limit natural growth through hardship and disease. Just seventy-five years ago, Hitler rounded up Jews, ghettoized them, and finally murdered six million of them in Europe in an attempt to destroy the entire people. Just a few days after the eight-day Passover holiday, the Jewish people will remember the Holocaust on Yom Ha-Shoah, a day when all Israeli citizens stand silent in memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Throughout the world, Jewish communities gather to remember, recite the names of those murdered, and light candles in memory of those whose names we still do not know.

Jews are particularly sensitive to attempts to limit their "natural growth" and the area in which they can live. President Obama continues to hit that nerve -- whether it is intentional or not.

Moreover, there is the issue of Jerusalem. For over 3,000 years, Jerusalem has been both the political and spiritual capital of the Jewish people. There has never been another.

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Love of the Land: The Subtext of the Obama-Israel Dispute

Love of the Land: How to please the Arab League

How to please the Arab League

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
14 March '10

Right from the beginning of his administration, President Obama made it a priority to win over the Arab and Muslim world. So here's a thought: while you struggle to keep up with the flood of commentary about the "new low" in US-Israeli relations, it's perhaps worthwhile to keep in mind that the next Arab League summit is scheduled for the end of March.

The summit will be held in Tripoli, Libya's capital, where the Arab League representatives will be hosted by Muammar Gaddafi, who just last month called for a "jihad" against Switzerland - well, actually, not just Switzerland, because he reportedly added: "Let us fight against Switzerland, Zionism and foreign aggression."

A quip about this call for "jihad" from a State Department spokesman required an official apology that apparently seemed warranted after the head of Libya's state oil company summoned executives from US energy companies Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, Hess and Marathon and warned them that "the dispute could hurt US businesses in Libya."

Arab commentators don't seem to expect much from the meeting in Tripoli: "Another lame summit" was the dismissive headline in a recent issue of Al-Ahram. Nevertheless, the related article offered a lot of advice on how to overcome the "lameness", and unsurprisingly, Israel was an important issue in this context. One piece of advice was that the Arab League should consider revoking any support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; instead, the Arab League was urged to endorse the so-called "one-state solution" resulting in "a single state covering the whole of historic Palestine in which all inhabitants would be guaranteed full and equal rights as citizens, regardless of ethnic or religious affiliation." Another piece of advice was that the Arabs should realize that with regard to the tensions with Iran, "Israel is the chief instigator."

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Love of the Land: How to please the Arab League

Love of the Land: The EU's Jerusalem policy

The EU's Jerusalem policy

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
06 December 09

Last week, the international media were abuzz with reports that the European Union (EU) planned to act on a Swedish initiative that called for the formal recognition of east Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. The endorsement was apparently expected in the wake of a meeting of EU foreign ministers scheduled for December 7-8 in Brussels, where the EU's policy on Mideast peace was among the issues on the agenda.

It is important to understand that the EU is currently trying to assert itself as a major player on the world stage. Europe has just filled two newly created leadership positions by appointing the first President of the European Council and the first High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Both positions went to "surprise" candidates who are hardly known on the European stage, and the appointments were widely criticized and even ridiculed. Indeed, it was rather fitting that one of the first media reports on the appointments concluded with some culinary revelations: "The decision was made last night over a dinner of wild mushrooms, spiced sea bass and chocolate fondant."

However, life in the service of the EU is not all about gourmet pleasures, and there has been quite a bit of concern recently because European politicians feel that they are no longer enjoying a "special relationship" with the US. A recent study on the subject warned gloomily:

An unsentimental President Obama has already lost patience with a Europe lacking coherence and purpose. In a post-American world, the United States knows it needs effective partners. If Europe cannot step up, the US will look for other privileged partners to do business with."

The EU's proposed stance on east Jerusalem may well be an exercise in muscle-flexing designed to show Obama that Europe is ready to fully back demands for a complete settlement construction freeze that would include Jerusalem. While searching for some background information on the subject, I came across a Web site called EUobserver that featured two relevant reports on its home page.

One report describes the apparently somewhat tense atmosphere during the first encounter between the EU's inexperienced new foreign policy chief and EU parliamentarians:

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Love of the Land: The EU's Jerusalem policy

Love of the Land: Who Killed Engagement with Iran?

Who Killed Engagement with Iran?

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
03 November 09

The collapse of President Obama’s daft strategy for “engaging” with the tyrants of Tehran has left his cheering section with some terrible questions. After spending months soft-pedaling Iran’s stolen election, abuse of dissidents, as well as the danger from its funding of terrorists and, of course, the threat from its drive for nuclear weapons, the administration thought it had fixed the problem with the deal it negotiated to have the Iranians ship their enriched uranium out of the country for processing. It was doubtful that the deal would have worked or that the Iranians wouldn’t have cheated. But Tehran’s rejection of the pact that its representatives had negotiated has the Obama camp thoroughly perplexed.

Their problem is that they can’t accept the obvious answer to the question as to why their solution has been sunk. Having been warned by skeptics of engagement that the Iranians’ only objective in negotiations was to prevaricate, the administration now finds itself scrambling for an explanation as to why their goodwill and generous offers have gotten them exactly nowhere. But ready as always with an explanation for their dilemma is the New York Times, which served up a healthy serving of excuses today in an article designed to rationalize both Iran’s stalling and Washington’s failed strategy. The piece, titled “Iran’s Politics Stand in the Way of a Nuclear Deal With the West,” claims that left to his own devices, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would love to ratify the pact and fulfill its requirements. But he can’t, says author Michael Slackman, because Iranian dissidents as well as a pesky school of “pragmatic conservatives” won’t let him get away with it. According to Slackman, liberal foes of the regime such as former presidential candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi, are trying to score points with the public by hammering Ahmadinejad as insufficiently nationalist, while the “pragmatists” to the right of him think he is betraying the Islamist cause by allowing the West to “cheat” Iran.

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Love of the Land: Who Killed Engagement with Iran?