Election Disadvantage
Ext – Obama Hurts US/Israel Relations
Download 1.8 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Obama’s reelection worsens US-Israel relations—views Israel as obstacles, con man
- Reelected Obama will be hostile toward Israel if they bomb Iran
- Obama’s reelection will escalate tensions with Israel --- no restraints in his second term.
Ext – Obama Hurts US/Israel RelationsRe-elected Obama more aggressive against IsraelSenor, 2012 (David Senor, coauthor with Saul Singer of "Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle" (Twelve, 2011), senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003-04, and an adviser to the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, March 5, 2012, “Why Israel Has Doubts About Obama,” Wall Street Journal, http://www.cfr.org/israel/why-israel-has-doubts-obama/p27561) The president's stern lectures to Israel's leaders were delivered repeatedly and very publicly at the United Nations, in Egypt and Turkey, all while he did not make a single visit to Israel to express solidarity. Thus, having helped foment an image of Israeli obstinacy, the Obama administration was now using this image of isolation against Israel's government. Mr. Panetta's criticism was promptly endorsed by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a harsh critic of Israel, who said Mr. Panetta was "correct in his assumptions." Indeed, almost every time the Obama administration has scolded Israel, the charges have been repeated by Turkish officials. November 2011: In advance of meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Mr. Panetta publicly previewed his message. He would warn Mr. Barak against a military strike on Iran's nuclear program: "There are going to be economic consequences . . . that could impact not just on our economy but the world economy." Even if the administration felt compelled to deliver this message privately, why undercut the perception of U.S.-Israel unity on the military option? That same month, an open microphone caught part of a private conversation between Mr. Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr. Sarkozy said of Israel's premier, "I can't stand Netanyahu. He's a liar." Rather than defend Israel's back, Mr. Obama piled on: "You're tired of him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day." December 2011: Again undercutting the credibility of the Israeli military option,v Mr. Panetta used a high-profile speech to challenge the idea that an Israeli strike could eliminate or substantially delay Iran's nuclear program, and he warned that "the United States would obviously be blamed." Mr. Panetta also addressed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by lecturing Israel to "just get to the damn table." This, despite the fact that Israel had been actively pursuing direct negotiations with the Palestinians, only to watch the Palestinian president abandon talks and unilaterally pursue statehood at the U.N. The Obama team thought the problem was with Israel? January 2012: In an interview, Mr. Obama referred to Prime Minister Erdogan as one of the five world leaders with whom he has developed "bonds of trust." According to Mr. Obama, these bonds have "allowed us to execute effective diplomacy." The Turkish government had earlier sanctioned a six-ship flotilla to penetrate Israel's naval blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Mr. Erdogan had said that Israel's defensive response was "cause for war." February 2012: At a conference in Tunis, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about Mr. Obama pandering to "Zionist lobbies." She acknowledged that it was "a fair question" and went on to explain that during an election season "there are comments made that certainly don't reflect our foreign policy." In an interview last week with the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, Mr. Obama dismissed domestic critics of his Israel policy as "a set of political actors who want to see if they can drive a wedge . . . between Barack Obama and the Jewish American vote." But what's glaring is how many of these criticisms have been leveled by Democrats. Last December, New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez lambasted administration officials at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing. He had proposed sanctions on Iran's central bank and the administration was hurling a range of objections. "Published reports say we have about a year," said Mr. Menendez. "So I find it pretty outrageous that when the clock is ticking . . . you come here and say what you say." Also last year, a number of leading Democrats, including Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Steny Hoyer, felt compelled to speak out in response to Mr. Obama's proposal for Israel to return to its indefensible pre-1967 borders. Rep. Eliot Engel told CNN that "for the president to emphasize that . . . was a very big mistake." In April 2010, 38 Democratic senators signed a critical letter to Secretary Clinton following the administration's public (and private) dressing down of the Israeli government. Sen. Charles Schumer used even stronger language in 2010 when he responded to "something I have never heard before," from the Obama State Department, "which is, the relationship of Israel and the United States depends on the pace of the negotiations. That is terrible. That is a dagger." Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent, said of Mr. Obama last year, "I think he's handled the relationship with Israel in a way that has encouraged Israel's enemies, and really unsettled the Israelis." Election-year politics may bring some short-term improvements in the U.S. relationship with Israel. But there's concern that a re-elected President Obama, with no more votes or donors to court, would be even more aggressive in his one-sided approach toward Israel. Obama’s reelection worsens US-Israel relations—views Israel as obstacles, con manMiller, 2012 (Aaron David Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Middle East negotiator in Democratic and Republican administrations, 1/2/12, “Bibi and Barack,” Los Angeles Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/02/opinion/la-oe-miller-bibi-barack-20120102) Barack Obama has an Israel problem. Almost three years in, the president still can't decide whether he wants to pander to the Israeli prime minister or pressure him. The approach of the 2012 elections makes the former almost mandatory; the president's reelection may make the latter possible. Buckle your seat belts. Unless Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu find a way to cooperate on a big venture that makes both of them look good, and in a way that allows each to invest in the other, the U.S.-Israel relationship may be in for a bumpy ride. The president's view of Israel is situated in two fundamental realities. The first is structural and is linked to the way Obama sees the world; the second is more situational and is driven by his view of Netanyahu and Israeli policies. Together they have created and sustained a deep level of frustration bordering on anger. Unlike his two predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama isn't in love with the idea of Israel. Intellectually he understands and supports the pro-Israeli trope — small democratic nation with dark past confronts huge existential threats — but it's really a head thing. Clinton and Bush were enamored emotionally with Israel's story and the prime ministers who narrated it. Clinton sat at the feet of Yitzhak Rabin — the authentic leader and hero in peace and war — as a student sits in thrall of a brilliant professor (some said like a son to a father). "I had come to love him," the former president wrote in his memoirs, "as I had rarely loved another man." And Bush 43, though often frustrated in the extreme with Ariel Sharon, loved his stories of biblical history and more contemporary war tales. Bush reacted — as he did on so many issues — from his gut, certainly when it came to Israel's security. While flying with Sharon over Israel's narrow waist, the then-governor said, "We have driveways in Texas longer than that." The main source of Obama's view of Israel lies in his broader assessment of conflict and how problems are resolved. Obama didn't get his vision of Israel from the movie "Exodus," in which the Israelis are cowboys and the Arabs are Indians. Nor does he have Clinton's Southern Baptist Bible sensibilities or Bush's evangelical ones relating to Israel as the Holy Land. Obama's views came from another place: his own logic, the university environment in which he developed intellectually and his own moral sensibilities. And according to this view, the Arab-Israeli dispute isn't some kind of morality play that pits the forces of good against the forces of darkness. Instead, it's a more complex tale, not of heroes and villains but of a conflict between two rights and two just causes. It's also a conflict that is vital to American interests. And those interests are being threatened by the divide between those who want a solution and are serious about moving toward one, and those who aren't serious about finding a solution and throw up obstacles. After three years, the president has clearly placed the Israelis in the latter category and the Palestinians in the former. The tendency to look at Israel analytically instead of emotionally, and to view the conflict through a national-interest prism rather than some sort of moral filter, dovetails with Obama's poisonous relationship with Netanyahu. Obama doesn't like him, doesn't trust him and views him as a con man. The Israeli prime minister has frustrated and embarrassed Obama and gotten in the way of the president's wildly exaggerated hopes for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he's been pursuing with more enthusiasm than viable strategy since his inauguration. To make matters worse, when the president went after a settlements freeze, Netanyahu called his bluff and Obama backed down — a terrible humiliation. Reelected Obama will be hostile toward Israel if they bomb IranGlick, 2012 (Caroline Glick, Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, journalist for Makor Rishon, and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, March 7, 2012, “Obama Demanding Israel Place Its Survival In His Hands,” Real Clear Politics, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/03/07/obama_demanding_israel_place_its_survival_in_his_hands_113398.html) In his commentary in Maariv’s Friday news supplement, the paper’s senior diplomatic commentator Ben Caspit laid out a hypothetical lecture that Obama might give Netanyahu during the two leaders’ tete-a- tete in the Oval Office Monday afternoon. In Caspit’s scenario, Obama used the meeting to lay down the law to the Israeli premier. If you bomb Iran’s nuclear installations before the November elections, in my second term Israel will no longer be able to buy spare parts for its weapons systems from the US. So too, Caspit’s Obama said, the US will end its support for Israel at the UN Security Council if Israel dares to take it upon itself to prevent Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold before the US elections. Perhaps Caspit wrote his article after hearing about a meeting between American Jews and Vice President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Anthony Blinken. According to Commentary’s Omri Ceren, Blinken told the assembled Jews that if Israel’s supporters discuss Obama’s hostile treatment of Israel in the context of the election, they can expect to suffer consequences if Obama is reelected. Obama’s reelection will escalate tensions with Israel --- no restraints in his second term.Glick, 2012 (Caroline Glick, Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, journalist for Makor Rishon, and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, March 7, 2012, “Obama Demanding Israel Place Its Survival In His Hands,” Real Clear Politics, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/03/07/obama_demanding_israel_place_its_survival_in_his_hands_113398.html) But what we do know is that under Obama’s leadership, senior US military and defense officials have made repeated statements that are openly hostile to Israel. Then-defense secretary Robert Gates called Israel “an ungrateful ally.” Current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demanded that Israel “get back to the damned table” with the Palestinians. General Dempsey and his predecessor Michael Mullen have spoken disparagingly of Israel and its military capabilities and so at a minimum gave comfort to its enemies. Aside from these rather uncooperative comments, under Obama the US has adopted policies and taken actions that have endangered Israel militarily on all fronts and in fundamental ways. With Obama at the helm the US not only stood back and allowed Hezbollah and Iran to take over Lebanon. The US has continued to supply the Hezbollah- controlled Lebanese military with sophisticated US arms. Under Obama, the US intervened in Egypt’s internal politics to empower the Muslim Brotherhood and overthrow Hosni Mubarak. The transformation of Israel’s border with Egypt from a peaceful boundary to a hostile one is the direct consequence of the US-supported overthrow of Mubarak and the US-supported rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. These are indisputable facts. Their military repercussions are enormous and entirely negative. Then there is Syria. For more than six months, Obama effectively sided with Bashar Assad against his own people who rose up against him. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Assad a reformer. Now, as Assad butchers his people by the thousands, the US has still failed to send even humanitarian aid to the Syrian people. Almost unbelievably, Clinton said that Assad would have to agree to any US assistance to the people who seek his overthrow. There have been reports that the US has warned Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia about the possibility that Assad’s ballistic missiles and chemical and biological arsenals may be transferred to terrorists. Such a prospect constitutes a clear and present danger to US national security – as well as to Israel’s national security. Indeed, the threat of proliferation of WMD is so dangerous that the administration could be expected to take preemptive steps to destroy or commandeer those arsenals. Certainly it could be expected to support an Israeli operation to do so. But according to reports, Obama has sufficed with empty warnings to the Arabs – not Israel – that this could perhaps be a problem. By failing to act against Assad, the Obama administration is effectively acting as the guardian of Iran’s most important regional ally. That is, far from enhancing Israel’s military posture, Obama’s behavior toward Syria is enhancing Iran’s military posture. He is acting in a manner one would expect Iran’s ally to behave, not in the manner that one would expect Israel’s ally to behave. As to Iran, while Obama touts the new anti-Iran sanctions that have been imposed since he took office as proof that he can be trusted to take action against Iran, the fact is that Obama has been forced to implement sanctions against his will by the US Congress and Europe. So too, Obama still refuses to implement the sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank that Congress passed against his strong objections earlier in the year. As with the case of Syria – and Hezbollah in Lebanon – on the issue of sanctions, Obama’s behavior has served to help rather than hinder Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities. Beyond Israel’s immediate borders, and beyond Iran, Obama’s behavior toward Turkey has had a destructive impact on Israel’s military position and strategic posture. Obama has said that Turkey’s Islamist, anti-Semitic Prime Minister Recip Erdogan is one of the five foreign leaders he is closest to. He reportedly speaks to Erdogan at least once a week. The Turkish leader prime minister is the Middle Eastern leader that Obama trusts the most. Erdogan gained Obama’s trust at the same time that he ended his country’s strategic alliance with Israel and began directly funding the Hamas terrorist organization and providing aid and comfort to Hamas by seeking to end Israel’s lawful maritime blockade of Gaza’s coastline. What is notable about Obama’s relationship with NATO member Turkey is that he has not used his relationship with Erdogan to influence Erdogan’s behavior. Instead he has rewarded Erdogan’s behavior. Obama’s self-congratulatory statements about US assistance to the development of Israel’s missile defense systems ring depressingly hollow for two main reasons. First, the military cooperation agreement between Israel and the US for the development of the Iron Dome antimortar and rocket shield was concluded and financed under President George W. Bush due to the peripatetic actions of Senator Mark Kirk. Obama inherited the program. And in his 2012 budget, Obama reduced US funding of the project. The second reason his statements ring hollow is because his actions as president have increased Israel’s need to defend itself from Palestinian mortars and rockets from Gaza. Obama has empowered the Palestinians to attack Israel at will and pressured Israel to take no offensive steps to reduce the Palestinians’ ability to attack it. This brings us to Obama’s statements about his support for Israel at the UN and toward the Palestinians. The fact is that it is Obama’s hostile position toward Israel that fuelled the Palestinians’ rejection of negotiations with Israel. As Mahmoud Abbas told The Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl, Obama’s demand for a Jewish building freeze convinced him that he has no reason to hold talks with Israel. Then there is his “support” for Israel at the UN. The fact is that the Palestinians only sought a UN Security Council resolution condemning Jewish construction in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria because Obama made them think that he would support it. It was Obama after all who called Israeli settlements “illegitimate,” and demanded an abrogation of Jewish building rights outside the armistice lines. The same is the case with the Palestinian decision to have the UN accept “Palestine” as a member. In his September 2010 address to the UN General Assembly Obama called for the establishment of a Palestinian state within a year. It was his statement that made the Palestinians think the US would back their decision to abandon negotiations with Israel and turn their cause over to the UN. So in both cases where Obama was compelled to defend Israel at the UN, Obama created the crisis that Israel was then compelled to beg him to defuse. And in both cases, he made Israel pay dearly for his protection. The fact is that Obama’s actions and his words have made clear that Israel cannot trust him, not on Iran and not on anything. The only thing that has been consistent about his Israel policy has been its hostility. As a consequence, the only messages emanating from his administration we can trust are those telling us that if Obama is reelected, he will no longer feel constrained to hide his hatred for Israel. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 1.8 Mb. Share with your friends:
|