President Obama’s recent Middle East vision statement is highly disturbing–even for this president it stands out. His perfidious demand that Israel recede to 1967 borders is imprudent, callow and dangerously amateurish. Does he actually expect this terminally weakened and militarily indefensible position of 1967 borders to be Israel’s starting point for the remaining negotiations? Obama once again confuses America’s friends with its foes. Ironically, I watched the president’s Middle Eastern policy speech from a London hotel room where two streets over a “free Palestine march” raged on. I say ironically because I had just returned from the Churchill Museum (one of my great hero’s) and was contemplating the far-reaching mistakes of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policies. Once again Obama squanders his political mojo (in this case from killing Bin Laden) by advancing his appeasement policies through pressuring our ally rather than our adversary.
Allow me to provide a little history on Israel. Most (not all but most) of the 800,000 or so Arabs who left Israel in 1948 did so voluntarily to avoid the crossfire of five Arab armies that rained upon the tiny nation immediately after its birth. They had every expectation that their Arab brethren would drive the Jews into the sea and they’d be back in their homes within a week or two. Well, a funny thing happened: the Jews won–and they continued to win every war that their tiny country (comprising just 1% of the Middle East) has fought to defend itself from its hostile neighbors. To forty seven Arab and Muslim nations, Jews occupying even this miniscule, arid and near-empty desert from which modern Israel has burgeoned was and remains unacceptable. Their obsession with Israel is incessant. Let’s also remember that some 800,000 Jews actually were forcibly banished from a number of Arab nations as a punishment for the UN’s creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Unlike Israel that absorbed the 800,000 Jewish refugees, the Arab refugees were stranded because no Arab nation would admit them. Why? Because Arabia wanted these refugees to be a perpetual thorn in the side of the Jewish state. The other reason is that these refugees, later-named “Palestinians “, are considered a second class citizen to most of the Arab world. Let’s also remember that 3,000 years before the first Muslim existed, Jews lived in the land of Israel. This is despite the intentional disinformation that is promulgated by Islamists from London and Paris to American college campuses who daily refute this inconvenient truth of history.
But I digress; back to Obama. It’s incredible when you stop to think about it, that he has been on the wrong side of just about every issue. Here are some examples. From his first ever interview as president with the Muslim television station Al-Arabia he has been shamelessly pandering and inexplicably tolerant of the most intolerant people on earth. As the Iraq war winds down let’s recall that he was fervently opposed to the surge that won that war–I mean he literally campaigned on it. I actually do credit him with overcoming his ideology to continue the chase for Bin Laden. However, he was very quick to take virtually all of the credit when at least part of it is due to the very techniques of coercive interrogation he vehemently opposes. And then there is the ongoing Eric Holder “investigation” of the very CIA operatives who supplied at least some of the necessary information that helped lead us to Bin Laden. He naïvely believes the “Arab Spring” is some kind of civil rights movement. Not that I blame all of these nations for revolting against their corrupt despots but when those who would be king are the Muslim Brotherhood and their creed I am not so sure. Call me callous but I prefer the oppressive autocrats who at least kept these crazy Islamists at bay. He also failed to support the Western-sympathizing young Iranians in their attempt to overthrow Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs just as he is currently failing to properly support the uprising against Assad in Syria. Assad is a pro-Iranian puppet who is an enemy of peace and of America. Obama’s words and actions on the Syrian uprising are awkward, desultory and weak. Obama has made it clear from the beginning that his strategy in dealing with radical Islam will be one of “balance” and appeasement and he has remained true to his word. His infamous 2009 Cairo speech introduced this policy of placation by ever so blithely reproaching the backwater, misogynistic, intolerant and undemocratic Arab regimes even as he called out the tiny democracy of Israel as the main impediment to Israeli-Palestinian peace. He reinforced this in the newest rendition of his Middle East policy.
President Obama’s petition that Israel surrenders lands it won in defensive wars and needs for its security against rabid enemies is an incredulous betrayal of one of our closest allies. He treats our friends like foes and foes like friends. Yep, he’s got a real knack for being AWOL when he should be counted and present when he should be mute. This most recent Obama vision for peace (or mirage) is the clearest line yet drawn in the sand that our president’s agenda is not aligned with mainstream America…or reality.