Post-American Presidency (17 page)

Syrian president Basher Assad hadn’t kicked Hamas out of Damascus. He hadn’t cut ties with the bloodthirsty mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or their equally bloodthirsty clients in Lebanon, Hizbullah. Syria was still one of the four nations designated as State Sponsors of Terrorism.

So what made Barack Obama think that it would be a good time to approach Syria with arms outstretched, fists unclenched? Well, he had promised to do so in his Inaugural Address. But his gestures of good-will were never reciprocated.

And given the consistent streak of hostility toward Israel that runs through his associations, his appointments, and his actions during his first months as president, maybe he never expected them to be. For without removing Syria from the State Department list of State Sponsors of Terrorism—or having any reason to do so—according to Syria’s ambassador in Washington, Imad Mustafa, the Obama administration in July 2009 lifted a ban on selling to Syria’s aviation industry, as well as a prohibition on selling information technology to Syria.

More easing of restrictions was to come, said Mustafa, despite the restrictions on “defense exports” and more to a State Sponsor of Terrorism.
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And despite Syria’s fanatical hatred of Israel.

Mustafa was right. In October 2009 it came to light that the Obama administration had played a key role in smoothing the progress of a trade agreement between Syria and the European Union that would mean as much as 7 billion dollars a year for the slumping Syrian economy. The deal had been in the offing since 2004, but the Bush administration had opposed it because of Syria’s ties to Hizbullah and Iran. Without asking for anything but promises in return, Obama dropped American opposition to the deal, and it went through.
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OBAMA AND ABBAS VS. NETANYAHU

During their press conference on May 18, 2009, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu called Barack Obama a “great friend of Israel” and a “true friend of Israel.” He thanked him for “your friendship to Israel and your friendship to me.” He even praised Obama as a “great leader: a great leader of the United States, a great leader of the world.”

Netanyahu sounded like a man who was trying to convince himself of something. Perhaps he thought he might convince Obama of Israel’s historic loyalty and importance as America’s most important strategic ally in the Middle East. After Obama’s performance at that press conference, it was understandable that the Israeli prime minister would feel the need to do that. It became clear at the meeting, which Obama had initially postponed, that Israel was being relegated to second-class status as far as its relationship with the United States was concerned.

In his remarks Obama was far less effusive than was Netanyahu. Obama did not call Netanyahu a “friend of the United States,” or confirm Netanyahu’s effusions about his alleged pro-Israel sentiments. He praised the Israeli leader’s “political skills” and said that he was confident the prime minister would “rise to the occasion” as he would be “confronted with as many important decisions about the long-term strategic interests of Israel as any prime minister that we’ve seen in a
very long time.” He declared, as if his solicitude for the Palestinians was quite understandable but that his concern for the Israelis was unusual, that it was “in the interests not only of the Palestinians but also the Israelis and the United States and the international community to achieve a two-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians are living side by side in peace and security.”

Obama then noted, correctly, that “we have seen progress stalled on this front.” But just as he has consistently acted since he has been president as if the conflict between the United States and the Islamic world is entirely the fault of the United States and within America’s power to end, so he seemed to assume that it was entirely up to Netanyahu and Israel to get progress moving toward this vaunted two-state solution: “And I suggested to the prime minister that he has a historic opportunity to get a serious movement on this issue during his tenure.”

To be sure, Obama did say that “there is no reason why we should not seize this opportunity and this moment for all the parties concerned to take seriously those obligations and to move forward in a way that assures Israel’s security, that stops the terrorist attacks that have been such a source of pain and hardship, and that we can stop rocket attacks on Israel, but that also allows Palestinians to govern themselves as an independent state that allows economic development to take place, that allows them to make serious progress in meeting the aspirations of their people.”
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However, while calling upon Netanyahu to rise to the occasion, Obama issued no similar call to Palestinian Arab leaders. Yet the weekend before Obama met with Netanyahu, Hamas, in control of the Gaza Strip and a significant presence in the West Bank, had repeated that it would never recognize Israel’s right to exist—in other words, it was still dedicated to Israel’s total destruction.
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Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal said also, nine days before Obama met with Netanyahu, that Hamas would never accept a two-state solution, either.
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And what if it did, anyway? The PLO’s ambassador to Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, said in April 2009 that “with the two-state solution, in my opinion, Israel will collapse, because if they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land and the Chosen People? What will become of all the sacrifices they made—just to be told to leave? They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status. The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward.”
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Was this the kind of attitude that Obama wanted to encourage? Certainly if he didn’t, he did nothing to discourage it.

And his take on Iran’s threat to Israel was no better. Obama declared during his meeting with Netanyahu that “it is in U.S. national security interests to assure that Israel’s security as an independent Jewish state is maintained.” But in speaking of Iran’s nuclear threat, he said that he wanted Iran to be “in a position to provide opportunities and prosperity for their people, but that the way to achieve those goals is not through the pursuit of a nuclear weapon”—as if Iran was pursuing nukes to alleviate some economic distress than can be relieved in some other way.

Fanatical Shi’ite messianism and genocidal hatred for Israel? Nothing that a few good talks couldn’t cure!

Obama also said: “It’s not clear to me why my outstretched hand would be interpreted as weakness.” But it wasn’t just reporters who saw it as weakness, it was the Iranian mullahs, who stepped up their demands and ratcheted up the bellicosity of their rhetoric considerably once Obama took office. Still, Israel’s “great friend,” and the nominal standard-bearer of the free world against the global jihad, did not adjust his course.

The jihad against Israel stayed on course also. Obama said during his press conference with Netanyahu that he supported “a two-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians are living side by side in peace and security.” Hamas, unimpressed—or even emboldened—by Obama’s concessions and overtures, responded by sending rockets into Israel again on the next day, severely damaging a home in Sderot and wounding several people. As the rockets fell, Senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (D-MA) was meeting with Netanyahu to discuss the finer points of Obama’s plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
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Ten days after Obama met with Netanyahu, he welcomed Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to the White House. The contrast with the chilly atmosphere of the Netanyahu meeting couldn’t have been more stark. Obama met Abbas bearing a gift: a firm U.S. demand that Israel stop the settlements in what it called Palestinian territories.
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He had met Netanyahu with no corresponding gift: no call to the Palestinians to stop the rocket attacks into Israel, or to tone down the genocidal and hate-filled anti-Semitic rhetoric that filled their airwaves even on children’s programs, or to recognize Israel in a definitive and honest way.

MILITARY TRAINING FOR THE PALESTINIANS

In May 2009 came the revelation that the United States and allied military, under the command of Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, was training 1,500 Palestinian troops. “We also have something in our pocket,” Dayton explained, “called the West Bank Training Initiative where we have plans to continue a series of courses in the West Bank on logistics, leadership, first aid, maintenance, English language, battalion staff training and driver education. These are led by our British and Turkish officers with an eye to eventually turning this over to the Palestinians themselves.”
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Would American-trained Palestinian troops one day go into
battle against the forces of American ally Israel? It was a distinct possibility.

But, of course, that was not why Lieutenant General Dayton and his aides were training the Palestinians. American officials were evidently hoping that the Palestinians trained in logistics, leadership, and battalion staff training would use this knowledge to fight against Hamas. That was fanciful enough. It reflected the widespread fantasy in Washington that Fatah represented a “moderate” alternative to Hamas and, once it prevailed in the Palestinian Authority, would establish a Palestinian state that would recognize Israel’s right to exist and live in peace side by side with the Jewish state. No one could have held this fantasy without ignoring numerous indications to the contrary, such as this July 2009 statement by Rafik Natsheh of the Fatah Central Committee:

Even aside from its Fatah fantasy, however, there were indications that the U.S. government under Barack Hussein Obama no longer had much of a problem with Hamas participating in the government of the new Palestinian state Obama so longed to establish. He had talked tough during his campaign about isolating Hamas and compelling it to renounce terrorism, but once he took the Oath of Office, he seemed to forget everything he had ever said about the terrorist group.

THE RENEGING BEGINS

Even before his meeting with Netanyahu, and even before the fateful week in May 2009 that Glick saw as marking the Obama administration’s
“harshest onslaught against Israel to date,”
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Obama’s pro-Israel pose was a distant memory. He was working hard to renege on his 2008 AIPAC promise to “isolate Hamas unless and until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements.”
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He said at that time that “there is no room at the negotiating table for terrorist organizations,” but as president, in April 2009, he was singing a different tune. He asked Congress to revise American laws preventing financial aid to terrorist organizations so that the United States could keep funding the Palestinian Authority even with Hamas as part of the government.
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Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-IL) had an eye for the outrage of legitimizing a group that celebrated the murders of Israeli civilians in pizza parlors and on buses. He remarked drily to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that this was tantamount to supporting a government that “only has a few Nazis in it.”
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The Obama administration did not ask the Palestinians to meet any conditions whatsoever, despite the conditions Obama had promised he would insist upon while he was campaigning for president. In October 2009, national security adviser Gen. James Jones declared that nothing was going to stand in the way of the creation of a Palestinian state. Speaking of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the Fourth Annual Gala of the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), Jones said, “The time has come to relaunch negotiations without preconditions to reach a final status agreement on two states.”
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Jones emphasized the president’s personal commitment to this resolution: “President Obama’s dedication to achieve these goals is unshaken, is committed, and we will be relentless in our pursuit of achieving these.” Belying Obama’s AIPAC promises, Jones said nothing about isolating Hamas until they renounce terrorism. Not a word about the need for Hamas or any other Palestinian entity to recognize
Israel’s right to exist. Nothing about compelling the Palestinians to abide by past agreements, which they have routinely violated. And Jones was entirely mum about the necessity for the Palestinians to renounce “the false prophets of extremism,” of which they are obviously still quite enamored.

History is full of ironies. And the Palestinians had more in store.

Just as Hamas fired rockets into Israel the day after Obama spoke confidently, at his press conference with Netanyahu, about Israel living peacefully side by side with a Palestinian state, so also the day after General Jones assured the ATFP crowd that the state would be established, Hamas made sure that no one got the impression that the Palestinians really had any intention at all of living in peace with the Israelis. Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV broadcast a children’s program, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers,” that featured a Palestinian child expressing a desire to become an English teacher in order “to teach children the language of their enemy.” Then a recurring character on the program, Nassur the bear, chimed in: “Like me! Just like I know the Zionist enemy’s language.”
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That Palestinian children were being taught that the United States and Israel are the “enemy” is no surprise. Still, coming at the same time as Jones’s remarks, it provided yet another indication of just how disconnected from reality was the Obama administration’s policy. General Jones, according to an ATFP press release, “said that ending the conflict and the occupation is essential because what is at stake is ‘nothing less than the dignity and the security of all human beings.’”