Obama's Anti-Zionism

By Daniel Pipes
http://www.nationalreview.com
January 22, 2013

Were Barack Obama reelected, Ipredicted two months before the November 2012 presidential vote, “the coldest treatment of Israel ever by a U.S. president will follow. Well, the election is over and that cold treatment is firmly in place. Obama has signaled in the past two months what lies ahead by:

Choosing three senior figures — John Kerry for State, John Brennan for the CIA, and Chuck Hagel for Defense — who range fromclueless about Israel to hostile toward it.

Approving a huge gift of advanced weapons — 20 F-16 fighter jets and 200 M1A1 Abrams tanks — to the Islamist government in Egypt despite the fact that its president, Mohamed Morsi, has become increasingly despotic and in 2010 calledJews “blood-suckers . . . warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.”

Ignoring evidence that Cairo is importing Scud missile parts from North Korea.

Reiterating the patronizing 35-year-old tacticrelied upon by anti-Israel types to condemn Israeli policies while pretending to be concerned for the country’s welfare: “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are,” as Obama said“repeatedly and privately” to Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg.

Rebuffing the 239 House members who calledfor closing the PLO office in Washington in response to the PLO’s drive for state-observer status at the United Nations.
Asked about Obama’s nomination of Hagel, Ed Koch, the former New York City mayor who despite his astringent criticism of Obama nonetheless endorsed him for reelection, offeredan astonishing response: “I thought that there would come a time when [Obama] would renege on . . . his support of Israel [but this] comes a little earlier than I thought.” Even Obama’s pro-Israel supporters expected him to turn against the Jewish state.
These anti-Israel steps raise worries because they jibe with Obama’s early anti-Zionist views. We lack specifics, but we know that he studied with, befriended, socialized with, and encouraged Palestinian extremists. Take, for example, anti-Israel theorist Edward Said. A picture from 1998 shows Obama listening raptly to Said as he delivered the keynote speech at an Arab community event in Chicago. Or consider former PLO public-relations operative Rashid Khalidi, then Obama pal. In 2003, at an event to honor Khalidi, Obama sat idly by as speakers accused Israel of waging a terrorist campaign against Palestinians and compared “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden. Ali Abunimah, an anti-Israel agitator, commended Obama in 2004 for “his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” code words for distancing the U.S. government from Israel. In turn, Obama praised Abunimah for his obsessively anti-Israel articles in the Chicago Tribune, urging him to “keep up the good work!”
Abunimah also reveals that, starting in 2002, Obama toned down his anti-Israel rhetoric “as he planned his move from small-time Illinois politics to the national scene.” Obama made this explicit two years later, apologizing to Abunimah: “Hey, 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.”
And Obama dutifully tacked in the pro-Israel direction, if in a cramped and reluctant manner (“I have to deal with him every day,” he complainedabout Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu). He supported Israel in its 2008–2009 and 2012 wars with Hamas. His administrationcalled the Goldstone Report “deeply flawed” and backed Israel at the United Nations with lobbying efforts, votes, and vetoes. Armaments flowed. The Israeli exception to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty remained in place. When Ankara canceled Israeli participation in the 2009 “Anatolian Eagle” air-force exercise, the U.S. government pulled outin solidarity. If Obama created crises over Israeli housing starts, he eventually allowed these to simmer down.
Returning to the present: Netanyahu’s likely reelection as Israeli prime minister this week will mean continuity of leadership in both countries. But that does not imply continuity in U.S.-Israel relations; after a decade of political positioning, Obama is now freed from reelection constraints and can finally express his early anti-Zionist views. Watch for a markedly worse tone from the second Obama administration toward the third Netanyahu government.
Recalling what Obama said privately in March 2012 to then-president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev (“This is my last election, and after my election, I have more flexibility”), there is every reason to think that, having won that reelection, things have now “calmed down” and, after a decade of caution, he can “be more up front” in advancing the Palestinian cause against Israel.
I also predicted in September that “Israel’s troubles will really begin” should Obama win a second term. These troubles have begun; Jerusalem, brace for a rough four years.
— Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2013 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

Philadelphia: The Key

Nov 27, 2012 

By Daniel Pipes

http://www.nationalreview.com

The Second Hamas–Israel War, of November 10 to 21, inspired a mighty debate over rights and wrongs, with each side appealing to the large undecided bloc (19 percent of Americans according to CNN/ORC, 38 percentaccording to Rasmussen). Is Israel a criminal state that has no right to exist, much less to deploy force? Or is it a modern liberal democracy with the rule of law that justifiably protects innocent civilians? Morality drives this debate.

To any sentient person, it is obvious that Israelis are 100 percent justified in protecting themselves from wanton attacks. A cartoon from the First Hamas–Israel War, of 2008 to 2009, symbolically showed a Palestinian terrorist shooting from behind a baby carriage at an Israeli soldier in front of a baby carriage.
The tougher question is how to prevent further Hamas–Israel wars. Some background: If Israelis are 100 percent justified in protecting themselves, their government also bears complete responsibility for creating this crisis. Specifically, it made two misguided unilateral withdrawals in 2005.
From Gaza: Ariel Sharon won reelection as prime minister in January 2003 in part by mocking a rival who called for the unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli residents and soldiers from Gaza; then,inexplicably, he adopted this same policy in November 2003 and put it into effect in August 2005. I dubbed this at that time “one of the worst errors ever made by a democracy.”
From the Philadelphi Corridor: Under pressure from the U.S., especially from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Sharon signed an agreement in September 2005, called “Agreed Arrangements,” that withdrew Israeli forces from the Philadelphi Corridor, a 14-kilometer-long and 100-meter-wide area between Gaza and Egypt. The hapless “European Union Border Assistance Mission at the Rafah Crossing Point” (EUBAM Rafah) took their place.
Trouble was, the Egyptian authorities had promised in their 1979 peace treaty with Israel(III:2) to prevent “acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, or violence” but in fact permitted massive smuggling of armaments to Gaza via tunnels. According to a former head of Israel’s Southern Command, Doron Almog, writing in early 2004, “smuggling has a strategic dimension” because it involves sufficient quantities of arms and materiel “to turn Gaza into launching pad for ever-deeper attacks against Israel proper.”
Almog considered these policies “a dangerous gamble” by the Mubarak regime and a “profound strategic danger” that could “endanger the Israeli-Egyptian peace accord and threaten the stability of the whole region.” He attributed the lax Egyptian attitude to a mix of anti-Zionist views among officialdom and a readiness to vent the Egyptian public’s anti-Zionist sentiments.
Sharon arrogantly signed the “Agreed Arrangements,” contrary to the strong opposition of Israel’s security establishment. Of course, by removing this layer of Israeli protection, an “exponential increase” in the Gaza arsenal predictably followed, culminating in the Fajr-5 missiles that reached Tel Aviv this month.
To permit Israeli soldiers effectively to prevent armaments from reaching Gaza, David Eshel of Defense Update argued in 2009 for the IDF taking back the Philadelphi Corridor and increasing its size to “a fully sterile security line of about 1,000 meters,” even though this would mean having to relocate about 50,000 Gaza residents. Interestingly, the Palestinian Authority’s Ahmed Qurei privately endorsed similar steps in 2008.
Almog goes farther: Noting deep Iranian involvement in Gaza, he advocates making the Philadelphi Corridor into a no-man’s-land by widening it to about ten kilometers. Ideally, he writes me, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will build this anti-smuggling obstacle and the American military will have a continued role policing the border. Second best, Israelis do this alone. (The still-operational Gaza-Jericho Agreement of May 1994 establishes a “Military Installation Area” under Israel’s full control — in effect, the Philadelphi Corridor — that provides Jerusalem with the legal basis to take back this crucial border.)
In contrast, Michael Herzog, formerly a high-ranking official in Israel’s defense ministry, tells me it is too late for Israel to take back the Philadelphi Corridor, that international pressure on Egypt to stop the flow of arms to Gaza is the solution. Likewise, former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Dore Gold backs joint U.S.-Israel “arrangements” to keep out new weaponry.
I am skeptical about an effective American role, whether military or diplomatic; Israelis alone have the incentive to close down the arms transfers. Western governments should signal Hamas that they will encourage Jerusalem to respond to the next missile attack by retaking and enlarging the Philadelphi Corridor, thereby preventing further aggression, humanitarian tragedy, and political crises.
— Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2012 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.