Isi Leibler, writing in the Jerusalem Post, observes Obama’s not at all evenhanded approach to the Middle East, started long before the most recent conflict over an apartment complex in Jerusalem:
These hostile outbursts must be viewed in the context of the fact that despite strong ongoing support for Israel by the American people, the US-Israel relationship has been on a downward spiral since the election of the new administration. Former Mossad head Ephraim Halevy attributes this to Obama’s determination to rehabilitate Islam’s global tarnished image.
Yet his strategy of “engaging” Islamic rogue states has been disastrous. The effort to prevent the nuclearization of Iran by appeasing the Iranian tyrants backfired with the ayatollahs literally mocking the US. The response of Syrian President Bashar Assad to US groveling and the appointment of an ambassador to Damascus, was to host a summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hizbullah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah and ridicule the US demand that he curtail his relationship with Iran. President Obama did not consider this “insulting,” prompting the editor of the Lebanese The Daily Star to say that “the Obama administration these days provokes little confidence in its allies and even less fear in its adversaries.”
Condemnation is reserved for the Israelis who have been berated in private and in public for over a year. Not for the other side:
In stark contrast, the US has not publicly reprimanded the PA on a single issue over the past twelve months. It is unconscionable that neither the White House nor the State Department conveyed a word of protest concerning the ongoing incitement and spate of ceremonies sanctifying the memory of the most degenerate suicide killers and mass murderers. Not even when our peace partners President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad personally partook in these ghoulish ceremonies.
And where is this heading? Leibler suspects the worst: “Obama is surely aware that recent statements by his administration will only embolden the Palestinians and Jihadists to be more extreme in their demands, making it inevitable that the talks will almost certainly fail. Some may infer that this is precisely his intention. We will then be blamed for the breakdown and the US, with the backing of the Quartet and others, will then seek to impose a solution upon us.”
And meanwhile the Iranian nuclear threat looms. By the way, it’s mid-March. Where are the sanctions? Why haven’t we resolved the differences between the House and the Senate bill and sent it to the president’s desk? Maybe the White House would prefer to go slow on that one. After all, the “real” crisis is a potential breakdown in proximity talks that have no chance of success. It is a cockeyed set of priorities, which seem oddly in tune with those of Israels’ foes.
In the end we will have no “peace,” our relationship with Israel will be strained but not broken, and the mullahs will move steadily ahead with their nuclear program. And the Palestinians bent on violence will seize the chance to make mischief. This is the result of the most misguided American Middle East policy in decades. It’s change, alright. Let’s hope the damage is reversable.