Washington versus Jerusalem

The Obama policy toward Israel has consistently proceeded from the assumption that the responsibility for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians lay entirely with Israel.

By PAMELA GELLER
US Secretary of State John Kerry and PM Binyamin Netanyahu. (photo credit: Amos Ben Gershon/GPO)
US Secretary of State John Kerry and PM Binyamin Netanyahu.
(photo credit: Amos Ben Gershon/GPO)
After losing Afghanistan, turning over Iraq and Libya to al-Qaida, pressuring Egypt to restore the Muslim Brotherhood to power, paving the way for a nuclear Iran, giving weapons to the jihadists in Syria, and alienating Pakistan, US President Barack Obama is going for the full betrayal of Israel. Sources within the Israeli government have reportedly revealed that Secretary of State John Kerry is responsible for the European Union’s threats to boycott Israeli products and companies that operate in territories considered to be “occupied.”
It’s as if Franklin D. Roosevelt had been behind Kristallnacht. The more the Muslim world incites violence and hatred against the tiny Jewish state, the more the Obama administration demands of Israel. The New York Times even reported on this incitement:
Adolf Hitler is quoted on the websites of Palestinian Authority schools. A young girl appears on Palestinian television, describing Jews as “barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs” and the “murderers of Muhammad,” the Islamic prophet. Maps on the Facebook page of the Palestinian presidential guards do not show Israel. Palestian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas himself embraced as “heroes” released Palestinian prisoners who killed Israelis.
Genocidal hatred of Jews is common on official Palestinian Authority television. Palestinian spokesmen make no secret of their goal to destroy Israel completely. This is in brazen and open violation of the Oslo Accords, in which the Palestinians agreed to put an end to incitement of violence against Jews and Israel.
Remember: as Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “The genocide at Auschwitz began with words.” Yet the Obama Administration has all but ignored Palestinian incitement. Obama has never done the slightest thing to hold the Palestinians accountable, and instead points to “settlements” as if they were the principal obstacle to peace.
In light of all this, why should Israel accept any agreement brokered by Obama and Kerry?
All this is nothing new. Arab Muslim boycotts of the Jewish people go back to before the establishment of Israel. Muslim boycotts of Jewish interests in the British Mandate areas that are now Israel, started as early as 1922, motivated by Islamic Jew-hatred.
Trying to destroy Zionism economically, the Arab League Council declared a boycott of Jewish goods on December 2, 1945:
Jewish products and manufactured [goods] in Palestine shall be [considered] undesirable in the Arab countries; to permit them to enter the Arab countries would lead to the realization of the Zionist political objectives. ... every State of the League should, before January 1, 1946, take measures which they consider fit and which will be in conformity with the principles of administration and legislation therein, such as making use of import balances in this respect in order to prevent these products and manufactured [goods] from entering [these] countries regardless of whether they have come from Palestine or by any other route.
So Kerry and Obama are following in the footsteps of Palestinian jihadis bent on destroying Israel. Just how far down has Obama taken this once-great light unto nations? In 1977, while Jimmy Carter (no friend of Israel then or now) was president, Congress passed a law mandating fines for any American company that joined the boycott of Israel. Carter signed it. Now we have a president sponsoring that same boycott.
Obama’s bullying of Israel and the Jewish people is constant throughout his administration. Obama is the most anti-Israel president the United States has had since the State of Israel was formed; yet American Jews twice voted in large numbers for him. They should have seen what was coming all along. They should have noted a March 2007 account by the pro-Palestinian blogger Ali Abunimah on a viciously anti-Israel website called The Electronic Intifadah. Abunimah said that Obama adopted a pro-Israel position as a matter of political expediency, claiming that in 2004 Obama apologized to him for not being more anti-Israel: “I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.”
Voters only had to scratch the surface and look into his background to see through Obama’s deception – and find not one, not two, not three, but numerous associations with virulent anti-Semites and haters of Israel. Throughout his life Obama has been close friends with numerous virulent anti-Semites: Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Khalid al-Mansour, Rashid Khalidi and others. Since he has been president, he has appointed one foe of Israel after another to high positions: Samantha Power, Chuck Hagel, Susan Rice – and yes, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.
It may be an old cliché, but it’s true: show me your friends, and I’ll show you who and what you are.
American Jews should have noted this, and noted it well. Instead, they fell for Obama’s smooth talk. A lifetime of anti-Semitic associations, alliances, mentors and troubling actions were summarily dismissed.
The Obama policy toward Israel has consistently proceeded from the assumption that the responsibility for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians lay entirely with Israel. It was only three weeks after Obama took office when Israeli pundit Caroline Glick noted that “since it came into office a month ago, every single Middle East policy the Obama administration has announced has been antithetical to Israel’s national security interests.”
Nothing has changed since then. It has only gotten worse. Now Israel and its supporters are paying the price.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here.