Obama Choosing to "Pass Over" Israel

Obama’s desire to out-do past presidents in achieving breakthroughs where his predecessors failed is a laudable goal except that, as with health care reform, Obama cares less about the consequences of his actions and more about his reputation as a “transformational” leader whose will justifies any way.

So strong is Obama’s desire to broker an historic formation of a Palestinian state that the president vilifies Israel over its plan to build 1,600 apartments in East Jerusalem—territory that Israel won in the 1967 Mideast war. In the Mexican-American War, ending in 1848, the United States won land that now comprises the states of California, Utah, and Nevada, as well as most of Arizona and New Mexico, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. Is President Obama willing to give that land back to the Mexicans?

And since when has sacrificing “land for peace” resulted in anything other than sacrifices for Israel?

As Mario Loyola points out in the National Review online: “Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in the interest of peace and got a second Lebanon war instead. It withdrew from most of the West Bank, and was repaid with a thousand Israeli civilians dead. It withdrew from Gaza, forcibly uprooting thousands of Jewish settlers, and the response was thousands of rockets fired at its civilian population, attacks that continue to this day. Still, despite these horrifying object lessons in the flaws of the ‘peace process,’ the Obama administration acts as if the peace process has no flaws at all and if Israel would just make a few more concessions, everything would be okay.”

U.S. officials describe the president as “livid” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because of the East Jerusalem construction. Is Obama equally “livid” over the Iranians’ construction of nuclear weapons?

While Israel faces an existential threat from Iran and while the Palestinians persist in calling for Israel’s destruction, Obama repeatedly calls for Israel to make more “concessions” for the sake of a “peace process” while the Palestinians make no concessions. Last year the president warned Netanyahu not to surprise the U.S. with a military attack against Iran.

Put that together and Obama is asking Israel to meekly acquiesce to its sworn enemies and to make itself vulnerable to annihilation, which is completely contrary to Jews’ vows of “never again” after the Holocaust.

Two obligations of any nation and its government are to maintain the security of its people and the sovereignty of its borders. This is all Israel is asking for Obama to accept—not with rhetoric but with the realistic understanding that America should not ask Israel to endanger itself as America should not be endangered.

In the Haggadah, the prayer book used for the Passover Seder, Jews ask: “May we be spared sorrow and adversity, and may we never suffer shame or humiliation.”

In 2008, 78 percent of American Jews voted for Obama. Perhaps one lesson of this Passover should be “never again” to that.

Communications consultant Jon Kraushar is at www.jonkraushar.net.