How Obama's Policies Handcuff and Threaten Israel

Is there a threat to Israel from the United States under Barack Obama? The question itself seems perverse. For in spite of the hostility to Israel in certain American quarters, this country has more often than not been the beleaguered Jewish state's only friend in the face of threats coming from others. Nor has the young Obama administration been any less fervent than its last two predecessors in declaring an undying commitment to the security and survival of Israel.

...During the 2008 presidential campaign, friends of Israel (a category that, speculations to the contrary notwithstanding, still includes a large majority of the American Jewish community) had ample reason for anxiety over Mr. Obama. The main reason was his attitude toward Iran. After all, Iran under its current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was vowing almost on a daily basis to "wipe Israel off the map" and was drawing closer and closer to acquiring the nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles that would give the ruling mullocracy the means to do so. And yet Mr. Obama seemed to think that the best way to head off the very real possibility this posed of another holocaust was by entering into talks with Iran "without preconditions." Otherwise, except for campaign promises, his record was bereft of any definitive indication of his views on the war the Arab/Muslim world has been waging against the Jewish state from the day of its founding more than 60 years ago.

Still—lest we forget—Mr. Obama did have a history of involvement with associates whose enmity toward Israel was unmistakable. There was, most notoriously, his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In addition to honoring the blatantly anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan, Mr. Wright was on record as believing that Israel had joined with South Africa in developing an "ethnic bomb" designed to kill blacks and Arabs but not whites; he had accused Israel of committing "genocide" against the Palestinians; and he had participated in a campaign to get American companies to "divest" from Israel.

Then there was Rashid Khalidi, holder of a professorship at Columbia named after his idol, the late Edward Said. As befitted a reverential disciple of the leading propagandist for Palestinian terrorism, and himself a defender of suicide bombing, Mr. Khalidi regularly denounced Israel as a "racist" state in the process of creating an "apartheid system." Nevertheless, Mr. Obama had befriended him, had publicly acknowledged being influenced by him, and, as a member of the board of a charitable foundation, had also helped to support him financially. And there was also one of Mr. Obama's chief advisers on national security and a co-chairman of his campaign, Gen. Merrill McPeak, who subscribed to the canard that American policy in the Middle East was dictated by Jews in the interests not of the United States but of Israel.

Others said to be advising Mr. Obama included a number who were no more notable than Gen. McPeak for their friendliness toward Israel: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Malley, Susan Rice and Samantha Power.

Not surprisingly, a fair number of Jews who had never voted for a Republican in their lives were disturbed enough to tell pollsters that they had serious doubts about supporting Mr. Obama. Faced with this horrific prospect, Mr. Obama's Jewish backers mounted a vigorous effort of reassurance. No fewer than 300 rabbis issued a statement declaring that his "deep and abiding spiritual faith" derived from "the teachings of the Hebrew Prophets." Several well-known champions of Israel also wrote articles explaining on rather convoluted grounds why they were backing Mr. Obama.

The small community of politically conservative Jews did what it could to counter this campaign, but to no avail. In the event, Mr. Obama received 78% of the Jewish vote. This was a staggering 35 points higher than the pro-Obama white vote in general (43%), and it was even 11 points higher than the Hispanic vote (67%). Only with blacks, who gave him 95% of their vote, did Mr. Obama do better than with Jews.

But if the forecasts of a Jewish defection from Mr. Obama were all wrong, the prediction of his Jewish opponents that he would be less friendly toward Israel than George W. Bush has turned out to be more accurate than any "kishke test."

Mr. Obama and his team are all great worshipers at the shrine of "evenhandedness," which has long served as a deceptive euphemism for pressuring Israel to make unilateral concessions to Palestinian demands.

I say that nothing will come of renewed American pressure on Israel to accept the demands that are the precondition of a deal with the Palestinians or the Syrians, I mean that nothing will come of it on the ground...

But what surely does rise to the level of a threat is American policy toward Iran. In making the ridiculous boast during his presidential campaign that he could talk Iran into giving up its quest for nuclear weapons (and the missiles to deliver them), Mr. Obama was careful to add that the military option remained available in case all else failed. But everyone, and especially the Iranians and the Israelis, had to know that this was pro forma, and that if elected Mr. Obama would pursue the same carrot-and-stick approach of the Europeans who had been negotiating with Iran for the past five years. He would do this in spite of the fact that the only accomplishment of the European diplomatic dance had been to buy the Iranians more time...

...With American military action ruled out, the only hope is that such action—which could at the very least head off the otherwise virtually certain prospect of a nuclear war—will be taken by Israel.

Forget about the Palestinian and Syrian "tracks": If there is a threat to Israel coming from Mr. Obama, it is that, having eschewed the use of force by the United States, he will follow through on his vice president's declaration that the Israelis would be "ill advised" to attack the Iranian nuclear sites and will prevent them from doing the job themselves.