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Crisis with U.S. Gives Encouragement to Israel's Enemies

(Jerusalem Post) David Horovitz - It is the staggering overreaction of the Obama administration, and most certainly and centrally of the president himself, that is the more shocking, counterproductive and potentially dangerous aspect of the current crisis. While most Israelis believe that prime ministers Rabin, Barak and Olmert traveled a great deal more than half way down the road in their efforts to reach a viable peaceful accommodation with the Palestinians, and that those efforts foundered on the rock of abiding Palestinian rejection of our very legitimacy here, the Obama presidency evidently feels differently. It is wrong and it ought to know better, but this administration apparently still believes that Israel had the capacity to go further. The American response emboldens Palestinian and wider Arab extremism. If America publicly brands Israel worthy of such bitter condemnation, then the worst of the extremists can confidently expect their violence against Israel to be granted still more indulgence internationally than it already enjoys. Furthermore, when professions of shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity - as expressed by Biden in his Tel Aviv speech - are rapidly followed by a public avalanche of criticism and allegations of disloyalty to U.S. interests, as expressed by the White House and State Department, how much weight can Israel henceforth afford to attach to such warm rhetorical assurances? Of course, siding with Israel has galvanized anger and violence against the U.S. But siding with Israel is siding with the values that are the essence of America. And abandoning Israel is abandoning those values. By deliberately inflating the Ramat Shlomo issue into a public crisis of faith in its ally, the Obama administration has given encouragement to Israel's enemies, turned more of Israel's friends against it, and potentially put every Israeli's life in a little more danger.
2010-03-26 09:33:43
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