While the Obama administration has desperately sought to delegitimize Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, days and weeks before his upcoming speech to Congress this Tuesday - and just prior to his re-election bid as Israeli's will soon go to the polls - it also allowed rumors to swirl that it would boycott the AIPAC conference scheduled for this week, as retaliation against Israel.Given that AIPAC is the single most important pro-Israel organization in the United States, to not send a high ranking official to the conference would be considered a major insult to American Jewry, as well.
This has, however, turned out to be false.
The Obama administration intends to send national security adviser, Susan Rice and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, both of whom are high level Obama administration officials. Rice, however, claims that Netanyahu, in the speech that he has yet to give, is "destructive of the fabric of the relationship" between the United States and its foremost Middle Eastern ally. Power, on the other hand, has pondered aloud, and before the cameras, about the circumstances in which the US might be compelled to slaughter Israeli Jews on behalf of the "Palestinians."
In a piece for the Jerusalem Post, Michael Freund asks, Is Obama stirring up anti-Semitism?
This is a sure sign that not only does the Obama administration lack message discipline, but can barely conceal its unmitigated hostility toward the Jewish state and the man who leads it. Indeed, to decry a speech by a close US ally to the elected representatives of the American people as “destructive” is not only offensive, but it crosses the lines of diplomatic decency. It is the kind of remark that Israel’s enemies will be more than happy to exploit in an effort to paint the Jewish state, and Jews themselves, as undermining America.I would argue that, in fact, Barack Obama is stirring up anti-Semitism and has been doing so for years.
It is not that Barack Obama is himself, necessarily, anti-Semitic, but that his disdain for the Jewish State of Israel, tends to justify the hatred of those who are. By continually making unreasonable demands upon the Jews of the Middle East - such as that they not be allowed to build housing for themselves in Judea and Samaria, the traditional homeland of the Jewish people, even within existing townships and villages - he helps create an atmosphere wherein anti-Semitism thrives and Jews around the world are put onto the defensive.
In any event, to invite Susan Rice to AIPAC is a kick in the head to all of us who care about the well-being of Israel. Obama is mocking AIPAC, if not American Jews, more generally, because now that he has won his second term there is little that we can do about it.
During the previous two presidential elections, American Jewry got down on its hands and knees and gave Barack Obama a big, wet smooch on the tush. In response, Obama has turned around and, with a smile, kicked us directly in the teeth... but he has been doing that, more or less continually, in a variety of ways almost immediately upon taking office.
However, revolting Susan Rice's views of Israel or Benjamin Netanyahu, at least, unlike Samantha Power, she never discussed on camera the circumstances necessary - as a matter of expressing the values of liberal democracy, no less - for conquering Israel and killing a bunch of Jews. The conversation took place entirely as a hypothetical in which she was asked that in the event that either side undertook genocide against the other, what should be the US response?
Needless to say, she automatically responded in a manner to insultingly indicate that she assumed that, naturally, the Jews would commit genocide against Arabs.
The truth, of course, is that given the opportunity the Arabs are far more likely to attempt genocide against the Jews than the other way around. The imams and the ayatollahs scream to the heavens on a daily basis for Jewish blood, yet removed and comfortable western progressives, like Power, assume the worst about the Jews.
Under such circumstances, she said, the US would need to "put something on the line," i.e., be willing to make hard sacrifices. And what might putting "something" on the line mean? She said:
Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of (giggling) tremendous political and financial import.Gee, I wonder just who it is that she might be referring to?
However, she is assuming that if the Obama administration were to attack Israel militarily that this automatically means that Obama would lose significant Jewish support. While one would hope that if Obama were to unleash the US Marine Corps upon the Jews in Israel he might lose some domestic Jewish support, however given the American Jewish response to Obama, thus far, I would not be too quick to make assumptions.
Power muses that the US would need "a mammoth protection force" to save the "Palestinians" from the Jews. It would have to be a "meaningful military presence" of US troops within Israel, because "you have to put something on the line."
Obama chose Rice and Power precisely to send a message to American Jewry.
Were that not the case he might have chosen individuals who do not stir up hatred for Israel, and thereby Jews, or who do not ponder aloud the circumstances under which the United States would have to militarily crush Jewish opposition in the Middle East.
Obama is sending these two because he only has a few years left to get his shots in, so he needs to take the opportunities when they arise.
