The Beauty of It All: Obama Does Not Matter

Kish Mich Vee Dee Yeedin Huben Gereet

And now President Barack Obama is threatening Israel and American Jews that he will bypass Mideast peace negotiations that include Israel and instead will go directly to the United Nations to impose, by U.N. fiat, a fait accompli, a “Two-State Solution,” on Israel.

Do you realize the beauty of it all?  For people of faith — Jews, Christians — Obama does not matter. 

And for people lacking faith — Obama also does not matter.  

When Sennacherib came upon the Kingdom of Judah, his fierce armies threatened King Hezekiah, camping outside Jerusalem in their myriads. That threat’s resolution is recounted in II Kings 18-19. 

Obama is no Sennacherib; he is a struggling golf player who, to demonstrate how “cool” he is, delights in walking down airport stairways without holding the railing.  That is all he is.  An empty suit, a Constitutional scholar who never was, a law review president who never published a single piece of legal scholarship, a reverse-Midas who ruins or tarnishes everything he touches.  Hugo Chavez did not fear him.  Vladimir Putin does not regard him.  The Iranians do not take him seriously.  America’s deepest enemies see him and act with a full sense that the vault is open, its contents free for the taking. 

If he was potentially someone of substance six years ago, he now is exposed as one of America’s weakest Presidents, both domestically and abroad.  Because of his station, he cannot be disregarded — but he is not to be feared.  Obama does not matter.

Among the Great Masters — Rembrandt, Van Gogh —  none painted with the beauty rendered by the Master of the Universe. 

 It is a thing of beauty:  

Obama's six years of incessant private tantrums and public threats and pressures against Israel — infantile gestures like refusing to have dinner with Bibi, making faces and digging his fingernails into his chair as Bibi spoke with him at the White House, demands that Israel stop building residences in Judea and Samaria, demanding along with Hillary and Biden that Jews stop building homes even in Jerusalem, speaking of Israel moving to pre-1967 lines, and now intimating that he will support “Two State” resolutions in the anti-Jewish U.N. — all have set new more-extreme “red lines” for Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), Hamas, and others who represent the Arabs of Judea and Samaria.  

Although a new American President later can “walk back” Obama’s unilateral narcissistic fits of vituperative pique, history shows that Arab leaders in Judea and Samaria cannot walk back their intensified demands.  Once demanded, they are engraved. 

And here is the beauty:

Each time Obama applies new pressure on Israel, he inadvertently strengthens Israel in Judea and Samaria.  

Every time Obama demands a unilateral Israeli withdrawal (a la Obama’s one-way hasty exits from Iraq and Afghanistan, and like the unilateral withdrawals that Ehud Barak executed in South Lebanon and that Ariel Sharon replicated with similarly disastrous results in Gaza) — Obama  inadvertently forces Abbas, the PA (Palestine Authority), and Hamas to adopt their own more extreme stands.  We cannot blame them; he forces it on them, and then they later cannot back down.  

Every time Obama ups the ante, he inadvertently makes it even more impossible for any Israeli leader, right or left, to acquiesce to any future deal like Rabin’s Oslo or Sharon’s Gaza disasters.  

Meanwhile, life does not remain in stasis. Inevitably, more Jews build homes in Judea and Samaria. Despite Obama, Hillary, Kerry, Biden and their building freezes, there now are 750,000 Jews living in East Jerusalem and in the rest of post-1967 Judea and Samaria.  

In 2009 when Obama’s Reign of Error began, there were fewer than 200,000 Jews in East Jerusalem and fewer than 300,000 Jews in the rest of Judea and Samaria.  Six years of pressure from Obama and his henchmen has resulted in increases to 325,000 and 425,000 respectively.  In total, a fifty percent increase.  As Obama hardens his lines —something he does nowhere else and to no one else — he compels Arab leaders there to harden their lines, guaranteeing perpetual stalemate, leaving the Jewish numbers to rise. 

The “Two State Solution” died when Obama became President.  He killed it without knowing it.

It is a thing of beauty:

The absurd “Two State Solution” that Sharon never should have accepted in the first place, died when Obama became President.  As with so much other destruction that Obama has wreaked elsewhere in the world and at home, he killed it without knowing it.

Even without new construction, more Jewish children are born each day to those 750,000 Jews.  Relatives move in.  Human increase cannot be stopped.  With those numbers, how is anyone going to move 750,000 Jews out of their homes? Not since Adolf Hitler has anyone moved that many Jews out of their homes. How is Obama or Hillary going to do it?  How would Buji or Tzipi? This is not Yamit or Gush Katif.  This is nearly a million Jews.  

Short of a Hitler-like Panzer blitzkrieg, backed by cattle cars and storm troopers — how is anyone going to move 750,000 Jews out of Judea and Samaria?  

And, thanks to Obama and his cohorts, that fascinating question can wait another day because Obama’s latest threats have pushed Abu Mazen and Hamas into harder lines, making “peace talks” even more impossible, leaving everyone in stalemate.  Meanwhile, while you were reading this, more Jewish children were being born in Judea and Samaria.

Consider a hypothetical: 

Yenta the Matchmaker decides to marry Abe to Sadie.  Both are in their late 50’s, Abe bankrupt, Sadie infertile. Abe says he will marry Sadie only if she agrees to bear him five children.  Sadie responds that, at age 57, she no longer can bear but would agree to adopt five.  Abe insists: “I want you to bear five children, not adopted.”  Yenta next spends five years pleading with Sadie:  “Promise him you will bear two children.  I can get him down from five.”  Sadie responds: “Do you not understand me?  I cannot bear children.  By the way, now I am 62.” As Yenta threatens to increase pressure on Sadie to bear, Sadie adds: “And I want a million-dollar ring from him.”  Yenta explains that Abe is bankrupt and is counting on Sadie to support him.  Sadie responds “I can compromise.  His ring can be $900,000.”

This kind of stuff is what goes on in these Mideast negotiations.  Add some music and put in on Broadway, but there is never going to be a “Two State Solution.”  It was killed by three men, with two accomplices.  

The murderers:  Obama, Ehud Barak, and Ariel Sharon.  The accomplices:  Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen.  

If there ever was a possibility that some Labor Party government unilaterally would impose an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, based on a Shimon Peres-like oblivion to the harsh realities of real life, Ehud Barak’s withdrawal from South Lebanon and Sharon’s from Gaza killed it.  

The withdrawals taught something shocking to the fools who had supported Oslo and unilateral withdrawals: 

 if you let them have cement and steel to build homes, they instead will built terror tunnels.  Now the rockets reach Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem, so Israel’s “beautiful people” no longer are limited to watching reality on the news. The Tel Aviv café night-life bon vivants now get to experience bomb shelters in vivid color and 3-D surround sound.

In all the years, Arafat and Abu Mazen never gave an inch.  Barak even offered Arafat East Jerusalem, and Arafat responded with an Intifada, as if to say: “How dare you offer me a country of my own?” Ehud Olmert, still awaiting the opportunity finally to begin serving his well-earned six years in prison for corruption and bribery, likewise was denied.  They will not accept any deal that includes living alongside a country defined as “Jewish.”

That was Netanyahu’s point when telling the media there never will be a “Two State Solution” while he is Prime Minister.  “Two State” is ridiculous because, at the end of the day, the Arab leaders of Judea and Samaria will not accept any arrangement that includes Jewish Israelis living on land that Israel liberated after 1967. They will not abide any neighbor, regardless of borders, that defines itself as a “Jewish” country. And no one will be able to evict 750,000 people from their homes unless they engage in Hitler techniques, doubtful in Israel.

For those who can handle the truth, there never will be a “Two State Solution” — regardless of whether we want one.  Israelis of all stripes have come to realize that Iran and its Shiite surrogates are gobbling up parts of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, and now Yemen.  They see that Hamas controls so much of Gaza and “the West Bank” that Abu Mazen has refused to call an election for six years since his four-year term ended in 2009.  They realize that any new Arab country established in Judea and Samaria instantly would become a haven for world terror. Israel’s national airport would have to close down permanently.

Let Obama’s pressure continue.  Let him continue forcing Abu Mazen and Hamas to ever-increasing negotiating extremes.  Meanwhile more Jewish children continue to be born every day in Judea and Samaria, and exorbitant housing prices along the coastal plane force a new Finance Minister who promised lower prices to find a way to increase home construction by enormous numbers to offset increased demand with increased supply.  Housing in East Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria will continue to rise.  The Jewish population will exceed the first million.  Obama does not matter.  It is a thing of beauty. 

Rabbi Dov Fischer is author of General Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine (Steimatzky: 1985). His political commentaries have appeared on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, National Review,  Los Angeles Times, and in other major American publications.  He formerly was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, is an adjunct professor of law at two prominent American law schools, and is Rav of Young Israel of Orange County, California.  He is author of Jews for Nothing (Feldheim: 1983) and is in his fifth year as a member of the National Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. His writings can be found at RabbiDov.com  As with all of Rabbi Prof. Fischer’s writings, this commentary expresses his own views.

Does Obama want Israel to commit suicide?

by 

Cal Thomas

In 1982, during one of many visits to Israel, I had the opportunity to speak with Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who told me, "Israel needs friends." He added that in the end, his nation could not trust any nation with its fate and security. The protection of Israel, he said, was ultimately the responsibility of Israelis.

Begin's comment was prophetic given the petulance of our current president, who behaves like an enemy of Israel when he attempts to impose a Palestinian state on Israel and negotiate a deal with Iran that can only lead to new threats against the Jewish state and further destabilize the chaotic Middle East.

Suicide is not in Israel's interests, or that of the United States, but suicide is what President Obama seems to want Israel to commit by pressuring it to return to indefensible 1967 borders and accept a nuclear deal with Iran.

In his determination to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear weapons program (which Iran has denied exists, so what is the U.S. negotiating?), President Obama has traded history, facts and reality for a potential deal with a regime that promotes terrorism around the world and is busy attaching Iraq to its vision of a greater Persian Empire.

Last Saturday, Iran's Supreme leader Ali Khamenei again called for "Death to America," just one day after President Obama appealed to Iranians in a video message to seize a "historic opportunity" for a nuclear deal and a better future. The leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, also continues to use inflammatory rhetoric about the ultimate destruction of Israel. What should this tell us?

The president is cozying up to a nation that oppresses women, has an apocalyptic view of the world and believes that if it starts a nuclear war the 12th Imam -- the Islamic messiah -- will emerge from a well and bring peace on Earth and good will, at least to Shia Muslim men. Women will remain subject to male domination and have only the few rights given to them by men.

Israel, which embraces Western values of free elections, religious tolerance and pluralism, a free press and equal rights for women is treated by President Obama and his administration as Iran should be treated. Do these people suffer from diplomatic dyslexia, or anti-Semitism?

The coming nuclear deal with Iran, if it occurs, will be a sham from the start. Agreements between nations require at least some trust, but Iran has as much credibility as a double-your-money promise from Bernie Madoff.

Why should Israel be forced to surrender more land to an enemy that has sworn to destroy it? A Palestinian state would likely be used as a launching pad for an attack. Gaza is a perfect example. It has been used by Hamas to attack Israel, which unilaterally and foolishly gave it up in hopes of promoting peace.

Suicide is not in Israel's interests, or that of the United States, but suicide is what President Obama seems to want Israel to commit by pressuring it to return to indefensible 1967 borders and accept a nuclear deal with Iran.

That two states is not what Israel's enemies want was made clear enough when President Clinton brought then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO leader Yasser Arafat to Camp David in 2000. Barak offered Arafat virtually everything he asked for -- 95 percent by some estimates -- and Arafat rejected the offer. Arafat, his contemporaries and those who have come after him, desire only one state headed by themselves with no Jewish state and no Jewish presence, as evidenced by the wars and terrorist attacks they have launched and continue to wage against Israel.

In Deuteronomy 17:7, God instructs the ancient Israelites: "You must purge the evil from among you."

In his dangerous pursuit of a problematic nuclear weapons deal with Iran and his attempt to marry a cancerous Palestinian state to the land of Israel, President Obama is not purging evil; he's inviting it to spread. History will judge him for this as it has every other nation that has harmed "the apple of His eye." (Zechariah 2:8)

Cal Thomas is America's most widely syndicated op-ed columnist. He joined Fox News Channel in 1997 as a political contributor. His latest book is "What Works: Common Sense Solutions for a Stronger America" is available in bookstores now. Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribune.com.

Obama ignites a backlash

By Jennifer Rubin

On Thursday, the White House, despite clarification about election comments from the reelected Israeli prime minister, kept up its war of words on the Jewish state. In a read-out of the president’s belated call with the prime minister the White House said Benjamin Netanyahu had won only a “plurality,” which might suggest there is ever a majority winner in Israel’s parliamentary system. There is not; this was another dig at Netanyahu, one more sign the president has essentially lost it, allowing his personal animus to govern his actions. Even after Netanyahu clarified in an interview that he had never retracted his embrace of a two-state solution, although current circumstances did not allow it (would any reasonable observer differ?), the administration refused to be mollified.

The president’s behavior seems to have induced a backlash.

I spoke by phone with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who seemed incredulous that the president would behave this way. But he suggested the president is alienating Democrats and convincing Congress he is irrational and untrustworthy when it comes to Israel and Iran. “It’s been unnerving seeing the president show his open hostility,” Graham said. “It’s immature and over the top and has made people suspicious.” He observed, “He makes it hard for Democrats to trust him.” The timing could not be more inopportune for the president who faces votes in Congress to require an up-or-down vote on the Iran deal and potentially to impose more sanctions. The Corker-Graham-Menendez bill will be marked up in April (with new Democratic co-sponsors, according to a Senate source) and Graham says, partly due to the president, Congress will have enough votes to override a veto. With the White House now suggesting it might not make the deal public, Graham says, the entire endeavor has become “absurd.”

Moreover, Graham hinted at another avenue to stop the president from going to the United Nations in lieu of the Senate. In deliberate fashion he added, “As for using the U.N. to avoid coming to the Congress, well that will create a real crisis between Congress and the U.N.” He notes that the United States pays for 22 percent of the U.N. budget and that the subcommittee he controls oversees State Department funding. Without directly threatening to cut off U.N. funding he says, “I am not going to ask American taxpayers to spend money on the U.N. that would [confirm a deal and undercut the Congress].” He added, “If the U.N. is used to going around Congress it would create a tremendous backlash.”

In addition, in a highly unusual statement AIPAC (whose members are overwhelmingly Democratic) chastised the president:

Today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly and clearly reaffirmed his commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In addition, he sought to reassure that his government will be dedicated to serving and representing all the people of Israel – both Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. Unfortunately, administration spokespersons rebuffed the prime minister’s efforts to improve the understandings between Israel and the U.S. In contrast to their comments, we urge the administration to further strengthen ties with America’s most reliable and only truly democratic ally in the Middle East. A solid and unwavering relationship between the U.S. and Israel is in the national security interests of both countries and reflects the values that we both cherish.

Former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block told Right Turn, “It is quite rare for AIPAC to directly and publicly criticize the White House, and clearly there is a feeling that the president’s staff is acting in an irresponsible way that undermines America’s interests and vital relationship with our only reliable democratic ally in the region.” He explained, “That would be bad White House policy at any time, but especially as the president has so badly alienated our Arab allies as well, and is, despite repeated promises to the contrary, in the midst of giving Iran a nuclear deal that provides the Islamic Republic with the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons at any time of its choosing.”

By the afternoon in eloquent fashion from the Senate floor, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) blasted Obama’s hostile reaction to our closest Middle East ally. Rubio declared, “This is a historic and tragic mistake. Israel is not a Republican or Democratic issue. If this was a Republican president doing these things, I would give the exact same speech. In fact, I would be even angrier. This is outrageous. It is irresponsible. It is dangerous, and it betrays the commitment this nation has made to the right of a Jewish state to exist in peace.”

Obama was expert in inspiring Israelis to rally around their prime minister. Now he is helping to consolidate bipartisan opposition to his policies, his unilateralism and his approach to Iran and Israel – and potentially to precipitate a bipartisan attack on the U.N. There really is no community organizer on the right who could have produced such results.

UPDATED: 

In addition, 363 House members, a huge bipartisan show of solidarity, are reportedly signed onto a letter to be sent to the president demanding Congress have a role and that any deal “foreclose any pathway to a bomb.” If nothing else, the president’s behavior has caused Democrats to lose faith in his “trust me” approach to negotiations. And to make matters worse for the president, his new year’s greeting to Iran in fawning tones drew a comparison between “hardliners” in both countries who seek to nix a deal. This gross moral equivalence and the assumption that the Iranian people have a say in their affairs should be enough for even the most loyal Democrats to question whether the president can be trusted to make a deal, and frankly whether he is totally out to lunch.

Israel: Beware of Obama

by Michael Goodwin

First he comes for the banks and health care, uses the IRS to go after critics, politicizes the Justice Department, spies on journalists, tries to curb religious freedom, slashes the military, throws open the borders, doubles the debt and nationalizes the Internet.

He lies to the public, ignores the Constitution, inflames race relations and urges Latinos to punish Republican “enemies.” He abandons our ­allies, appeases tyrants, coddles ­adversaries and uses the Crusades as an excuse for inaction as Islamist terrorists slaughter their way across the Mideast.

Now he’s coming for Israel.

Barack Obama’s promise to transform America was too modest. He is transforming the whole world before our eyes. Do you see it yet?

Against the backdrop of the tsunami of trouble he has unleashed, Obama’s pledge to “reassess” America’s relationship with Israel cannot be taken lightly. Already paving the way for an Iranian nuke, he is hinting he’ll also let the other anti-Semites at Turtle Bay have their way. That could mean American support for punitive Security Council resolutions or for Palestinian statehood initiatives. It could mean both, or something worse.

Whatever form the punishment takes, it will aim to teach Bibi Netanyahu never again to upstage him. And to teach Israeli voters never again to elect somebody Obama doesn’t like.

Apologists and wishful thinkers, including some Jews, insist Obama real­izes that the special relationship between Israel and the United States must prevail and that allowing too much daylight between friends will encourage enemies.

Those people are slow learners, or, more dangerously, deny-ists.

If Obama’s six years in office teach us anything, it is that he is impervious to appeals to good sense. Quite the contrary. Even respectful suggestions from supporters that he behave in the traditions of American presidents fill him with angry determination to do it his way.

For Israel, the consequences will be intended. Those who make excuses for Obama’s policy failures — naive, bad advice, bad luck — have not come to grips with his dark impulses and deep-seated rage.

His visceral dislike for Netanyahu is genuine, but also serves as a convenient fig leaf for his visceral dislike of Israel. The fact that it’s personal with Netanyahu doesn’t explain six years of trying to bully Israelis into signing a suicide pact with Muslims bent on destroying them. Netanyahu’s only sin is that he puts his nation’s security first and refuses to knuckle ­under to Obama’s endless demands for unilateral concessions.

That refusal is now the excuse to act against Israel. Consider that, for all the upheaval around the world, the president rarely has a cross word for, let alone an open dispute with, any other foreign leader. He calls Great Britain’s David Cameron “bro” and praised Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi, who had called Zionists, “the descendants of apes and pigs.”

Obama asked Vladimir Putin for patience, promising “more flexibility” after the 2012 election, a genuflection that earned him Russian aggression. His Asian pivot was a head fake, and China is exploiting the vacuum. None of those leaders has gotten the Netanyahu treatment, which included his being forced to use the White House back door on one trip, and the cold shoulder on another.

It is a clear and glaring double standard.

Most troubling is Obama’s bended-knee deference to Iran’s Supreme Leader, which has been repaid with “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” demonstrations in Tehran and expanded Iranian military action in other countries.

The courtship reached the height of absurdity last week, when Obama wished Iranians a happy Persian new year by equating Republican critics of his nuclear deal with the resistance of theocratic hard-liners, saying both “oppose a diplomatic solution.” That is a damnable slur given that a top American military official estimates that Iranian weapons, proxies and trainers killed 1,500 US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who in their right mind would trust such an evil regime with a nuke?

Yet Netanyahu, the leader of our only reliable ally in the region, is ­repeatedly singled out for abuse. He alone is the target of an orchestrated attempt to defeat him at the polls, with Obama political operatives, funded in part by American taxpayers, working to elect his opponent.

They failed and Netanyahu prevailed because Israelis see him as their best bet to protect them. Their choice was wise, but they better buckle up because it’s Israel’s turn to face the wrath of Obama.