‘It’s Jewish money, stupid’

By Ruthie Blum, ISRAEL HAYOM

Last week, on Jan. 19, U.S. President Barack Obama released a video called “America and Israel: An Unbreakable Bond.”

The seven-minute clip is an amalgamation of sound bites from the president’s own speeches, interspersed with statements made by different prominent Israeli leaders, among them Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Its apparent purpose is to refute claims on the part of the Republicans that the Obama administration is anti-Israel. Its true goal is to keep the president’s campaign afloat with Jewish cash.

To achieve this objective, the video features the voices of President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, and Netanyahu himself waxing poetic about Obama.

It’s a neat trick.

In his first three years in office, Obama has emerged as the most openly hostile U.S. president Israel has ever known. This is no surprise, given his oft-stated commitment to “outreach and dialogue” with sworn enemies across the globe, chief among them Iran.

Nor is it peculiar that, in spite of the above, Obama continued to take the Jewish vote for granted. After all, it is no secret that American Jews — even many who do care about Israel’s fate and survival — would rather be nuked by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s mullahs than cast their ballots for a Republican candidate.

What Obama didn’t bank on, however, was getting a cold financial shoulder from Jewish backers he assumed he would have in his pocket, along with their millions. Imagine his horror when figures like TV and media magnate Haim Saban, of “Power Rangers” fame, decided to cut a substantial amount of his support for the very president he had helped usher into the White House. Nor was Saban the only Jew to grow uncomfortable with Obama’s blatant aggression against Israel in word and deed.

What Obama and his team came to grasp was that, of all the factors which had handed him a landslide into the Oval Office, an empty till was not one of them.

With fiasco after disaster under his belt by now — and a Middle East on fire not with democracy, but with increased anti-Western radicalism — the inept incumbent can ill afford, both literally and figuratively, to lose Jewish money.

This predicament is compounded by the fact that, like his sycophants in the liberal mainstream media, Obama has been only too happy to blame Wall Street, not his own socialist policies, for the economic woes of the American people. Nevertheless, he still has to hedge his bets on hedge-fund bucks.

It remains to be seen whether his campaign managers’ transparent attempt at assuring rich Jews that Obama is Israel’s best friend will have the desired effect. It will certainly be welcomed by the Peace Now-niks and JStreeters who want Obama to win, precisely so that he will continue to pressure Israel to make concessions in exchange for nothing.

But it should also serve as a lesson to Netanyahu and co. for being so foolish as to have made public statements about Obama’s undying loyalty and friendship which they knew to be patently false.

Though it is, and always has been, par for the course for Israeli leaders to behave with deference to the U.S. administration, it is neither necessary nor desirable for them to bend over backwards to defend American moves that run contrary to Israeli interests. Netanyahu’s tight spot with a president who was caught on tape commiserating with counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy about having to “deal with” Netanyahu on a regular basis deserves no small degree of empathy.

But his response to it has been worse than counter-productive. Going out of his way (with the help of Oren) to laud Obama at synagogues and AIPAC conferences is taking the need to stress the U.S.’s friendship way beyond the call of duty. And all it has accomplished is to provide the president with grist for his PR mill.

Ruthie Blum is a former senior editor and columnist at The Jerusalem Post. She is currently writing a book about the radicalization of the Middle East, to be published by RVP Press in the spring.

January 25, 2012 | 19 Comments »

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19 Comments / 19 Comments

  1. Most people in the U.S. have not experienced and cannot fully understand the trauma Jews have lived with for thousands of years. We can’t imagine what it’s like to fight tooth and nail on a daily basis for survival or live among a people foreign to Western civilization, many of whom have no respect for life and live by a religious code so out of place in modern life, and who take constant advantage of others who try to help them.

    We are fighting the jihad mentality in the U.S. on a regular basis now. A young man in Minneapolis is being kept in jail because he threatened to kill his family. His father will not help him get a passport so he can go jihading, and he stabbed and threatened his mother and sister because they are only women…who cares about them? This is a complete change from what he was before he started going to a certain mosque. That mosque is now in trouble. I hope they lock this guy up for a long time. Muslims in New York City are angry because police send spies into their mosques to keep track of what’s going on. How can we not, especially after 9-11? It’s not a good time to be Muslim in America.

    Liberals have a philosophy of wanting everybody to have a fair shake, equal education, access to good jobs and civil rights for all people. Those ole Southern boys in congress want the best for themselves and to hell with everyone else. They don’t love their country. Never could I imagine that Americans could stoop so low. They are racist to Obama. They say terrible things about him and are getting bolder and bolder. Nothing for me to do but to fight them.

    And now for some truly amazing monumental news. Scientists have been researching the Sahara Desert for the last few decades. They find sea shells, skeletons of whales, fossils of all sorts of sea life, and lately tools made by early man. The scientists say that every 20,000 years the Sahara turns from a barren desert into a lake-filled savannah easily inhabitable by man and animals, then 20,000 years later it goes back to barren desert. It’s 7000 years into the desert phase right now. Are you ready for this? Scientists say this change is caused by a wobble in the earth’s rotation around the sun…

  3. I like Catarin for much of the reasons Ted mentioned and that she doesn’t take crap from you is all in her favor. That said from what I can see so far she is backing a winner unlike you.

    I like winners and have no use for losers.

  4. Ted,

    Your last sentence is precisely the point. Not to mention the lies she insists on making here about how wonderful a friend to Israel Obama is.

    But do you also care to respond to her cursing me too?

    Regards,

    Alan

  5. Alan, you are way out of line with your ad hominem attacks on Catarin. Although I don’t agree with what she has to say, I admire her courage to express her thoughts in the lion’s den. If only she would try to grasp what we are saying to determine if we are making a good case. Unfortunately she is too bent on defending Obama.

  7. Actually this is for Catmarin –

    Why do you post your garbage here? We’re sick and tired of Ovomit, his lies, his anti-Semitism – and his cowardice.

    IT WAS THE U.S. NAVY SEALS WHO DO THE JOB, NO OVOMIT NOR HIS LITTLE STOOGE PANETTA, WHO EVEN NOW WANTS TO GUT OUR MILITARY!

    We deserve better, Romney, Gingrich or Santorum are leaders – Ovomit is crap.

    Oh, since you defend Ovomit so much, Catmoron, how about spelling one word for us if you can.

    K-E-Y-S-T-O-N-E

    P.S. The Arizona Democratic Party headed by a self-hating JINO by the name of Cherney is demanding that Governor Jan Brewer apologize to Ovomit for the airport incident the other day. Methinks Ovomit owes both Governor Brewer and Bibi Netanyahu, not to mention the citizens of the United States of America and Israel an apology for his existing.

  9. The Jewish community invites abuse into their home. Obama will turn out to be another Hitler. The Holocaust of 6 million was horrible. A coincidence of 6 million Jews reside in the USA. “Lucky for Rulers men don’t think”….Adolf Hitler

  12. “Thank you, (I can’t call him what he has never been) Obama for investigating Wall Street”…

    How many of you have seen that comment? It was ALL over the White House Facebook page and believe it or not foolish asses with the names of Jay Fine and Mimi Rosenthal were signing on to it like those smug German Jews back ’32 who never thought Herr Hitler was a threat to them.

    Guess that saying holds true, folks. IF HITLER WERE A DEMOCRAT…

    Obama is the most disgusting, despicable openly anti-Semitic occupant of the White House in History. For those who argue about Nixon – Nixon said nasty things but in the end put American credibility and military support behind Israel. That is what is needs to be remembered for, not something he said that(might be true) about Leonard Bernstein or Abe Ribicoff (who continued to buss Carter’s ass even after his own niece was murdered by Palestinian terrorists). Obama talks a good talk, pulls out his buddies like the pathetic Jack Lew, Emanuel, or Danny Shapiro and proclaims to the world…some of my best friends are… but it is those like Jeremiah Wright, Rob Malley, Samantha Power whom he’ll really turn too.

    Need any more proof? Then ask yourself, especially if you support that piece o’crap why scores of cruise missiles were fired into Libya – while not a one has crashed into an Iranian nuke site…

    Getting back to my opening comment – remember, many of those “Wall Street” types whom the habitual LIAR says he’s now investigating he took money from – and many of them too, are Jews.
    Obama an anti-Semite? Heavens now…that is, if you’re a useless idiot so willing to swallow the lies and other things from a Wasserman Shultz.

  13. I pray that he is reelected, Miriam. The U.S. is in the worst spot since the Great Depression. Obama has held things steady. I think Mitt Romney is the only Republican candidate who could handle the financial situations we find ourselves in, but what else would he do? The U.S. Seals just rescued two aid workers who were being held hostage by the Somali pirates. Yea!

    I read Obama’s mother taught him to keep his cool when he suffered racial insults in Indonesia, and perhaps the veneer you see is a product of that. Yes, he wants to be reelected and most of the people in the U.S. want him reelected too.

    One of his daughters complained to Mrs. Obama she doesn’t want Obama to attend any more parent-teacher conferences because she is totally embarrassed over the commotion that is caused when the President of the United States visits.

  14. I don’t think he knows he is wrong. He thinks so highly of himself [because people told him he is wonderful]that he is above reproach. Besides, he wants to be reelected–everything else pales, by comparison

  15. It WAS Wall Street and the big Banks that got the U.S. into this situation, and it was happening long before Obama took office. During the two terms of George W. Bush there was a tacit agreement for the government to keep hands off of financial irregularities. Plenty of people suspected Madoff of fraud for years, one person repeatedly took his doubts to the SEC, only to be turned away each time. This “attitude” came from the very top. Bush and Cheney recklessly spent billions of dollars, as recklessly as the Somali pirates do. Bush will go down in history as the only president to “lose” a billion dollars to enemies during war (Iraq).

    Corrupt bankers put together investments made up of junk mortgage loans and nefariously guaranteed their safety. Investors bought them and many have gone belly up. Howe can anyone blame this on Obama?

    As to some Jews feeling Obama has abandoned them, not true. His past experience didn’t include WW II and the terrible deeds done by Nazis. At 50, he didn’t live in that era. Because of his many contacts with Muslim kids during his childhood, he grew up with no bias against them. Given his background and education, I think he thought he could have a positive relationship with Muslims that would carry over in other areas, namely in their relationships with Jews. I think he knows he was wrong.

  16. Obama’s so comfortable with taqiya, I had no doubt that he was a moslem long before he was elected AND what he would do to our country from the INSIDE. Despots throughout history have proven that the only way to get them to leave office is a bloody coup. In addition for his “request” for dictatorial powers, he also informed us of his intention to create a standing army in the U.S. in his SOTUS speech. He knows a lot of people are on to him, so he will first try to disposess people of their firearms, so that his standing army can tighten the noose around American citizens necks. If someone were to take him out, it would be a blessing for everyone on earth.

  18. You know it’s an election year right? So it’s going shopping for Jewish votes. Maybe the Jews will wake up and not go due to it being a Democrap. Spielberg should be ashamed of himself aligning himself with two anti-Semites: Gibson and B.O. Gibson’s movie about the Maccabees is being funded by Spielberg. I guess ET should be calling him home.